


Reprogramming

by ChipTheKeeper



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Enemies to Allies to...yeah, F/F, Marshal Dune hates the Empire, taking liberties with certain parts of canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 09:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27968192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipTheKeeper/pseuds/ChipTheKeeper
Summary: Under the jurisdiction of the New Republic, the Outer Rim has become a forgotten, lawless place. As a marshal on Nevarro, Cara Dune does her part to keep her city's people safe. But a new, yet familiar threat is beginning to emerge, and Cara will have to make an ally out of an old enemy in order to keep it in check.
Relationships: Cara Dune/Original Character(s), Cara Dune/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again. I'd come up with a very vague idea of this as the new season of the show got started and after the Nevarro episode I realized it might actually work if I steal bits. Once again I'm starting with a prologue chapter that takes place during the war and then the majority of the story will be set around/during the events of the show.
> 
> Anyway let's start with the longest chapter I've ever written. Enjoy!

**~ 3 ABY ~**

It took a lot longer than she would have liked for the name to feel natural.

_Alax Vanda._

_Alax Vanda._

_Alax Vanda._

She had to say it over and over because it didn’t fit at first. Didn’t feel like her. It sounded more like the name of some idealistic but hard-luck loser from nowhere. And, she supposed, that’s exactly what it was meant to sound like.

Her real name obviously would have been of no use in this situation -- other than probably getting her killed. No, the name she was born with needed to be the furthest thing from her mind here, deep behind enemy lines, in the trenches as it were. With the Rebels, she had to _be_ Alax Vanda.

Neither the name nor the cover story were of her own creation, but she’d memorized them in due time and added bits and pieces to the story to make it more real. Alax Vanda was born on Coruscant but spent most of her youth on Lothal, where she’d learned to hate the Empire. Alax Vanda grew up with five older brothers, learning to fight and to shoot and to swear with the best of them. Alax Vanda had loved playing sabacc, racing speeders, and trying to adopt Loth-cats as pets. But Alax Vanda had to give all that up to join the Rebels after her family had been killed in Grand Admiral Thrawn’s attack on the city.

It was a ridiculous story, but luckily she hadn’t had to share it with too many people. Only a few of the other shock troopers liked to talk much at all, and it was easier and safer just to blend in with the ones that didn’t. Lesson one of intelligence training: listen more, talk less.

And listen she did. That was the whole reason she was here in the first place. The other Rebels outside of the shock trooper unit never shut up -- even the officers! There was never a shortage of information and material to send back to her handlers, and she had to wonder how the undisciplined and unorganized group of traitors had ever managed to get this far against the might of the Empire in the first place.

_All luck_ , she thought. _It had to just be luck_.

She did have to admit that on an individual level there were some good soldiers, however. Like the one known as Dune. Cara, she thought, was her first name, but none of them ever seemed to use it. Dune was one of the few she’d noticed that never got called by her first name, only solidifying her opinion that the woman would have fit better in the Empire’s service. The hard glare always present on her face, the way she followed orders, and the precision and skill with which she carried out her tasks, all added to it as well. Dune was far more competent and intelligent than most of these useless mud scuffers. If the opportunity ever arose, perhaps Alax Vanda could convince her to leave this hopeless rebellion and put her skills to use for a real army.

_No_ , she reminded herself. _Not a recruiting mission. Stay focused_. In the weeks she’d spent among the Rebel scum, she’d learned a lot and passed along a lot of information to the Empire, but not the thing she’d been specifically sent for. The location of their new base still eluded her. Word was it was still being built, and the moment they were informed of its location she would have to move quickly to not only communicate it to the Empire but also remove herself from the group. She wanted to be nowhere near the place when Lord Vader and his men set out to destroy it.

But for now, she was in the middle of yet another battle against her own people. Or rather, Alax Vanda was in the middle of a battle against people she hated. She was glad she’d been raised not to grow attached to anyone she worked with or trained next to, that the Empire wasn’t as sentimental as the Rebels seemed to be. Otherwise it might have been difficult to aim her blaster at the stormtroopers they were fighting and pull the trigger. But these were nameless, faceless men, expendable to the Empire and to her, necessary losses on the way to finally putting an end to this ridiculous uprising.

On this particular mission, Alax Vanda was paired with Cara Dune as the shock trooper unit moved in small groups throughout an Imperial-occupied town, evacuating civilians before the imminent attack from the Empire. Stormtroopers resisted at nearly every turn, but she and Dune took out each one they saw without a second thought. She would have thought Imperial-trained soldiers would have put up a better fight, but now was not the time to ruminate on the validity of her father’s long-held opinions that other academies weren’t training their cadets as well as his was.

Now she had to play her part as Alax Vanda well, because she was the only one who knew what was coming. The Rebels expected a ground assault, and, technically, one would come. But only after a bombing run that had the potential to wipe the city off the planet entirely. She had to get to safety before that happened. She was just as expendable as any of the stormtroopers, even with her special role behind enemy lines.

“How many more?” she called to Dune in her unmistakable, posh Core accent. She’d considered trying to use one from the Mid Rim or farther so as to blend in more with most of the Rebels, but faking an accent was a risk that far outweighed its rewards.

“A lot,” Dune replied simply as she turned a corner and shot a pair of stormtroopers before they even saw her. “What’s the rush? Got somewhere else to be?”

Even after several weeks with the Rebels, it was still difficult to remind herself not to reply in earnest when one of them asked her a question sarcastically. Alax Vanda understood sarcasm, but the spy that played her didn’t quite get it most of the time. She _did_ have somewhere else to be -- anywhere but here -- but of course she couldn’t say that.

Alax Vanda stood aside as Dune kicked open a door, and answered with what she hoped would be received as the joke it was meant to be. “Just thought if we moved fast enough we could get home in time for dinner.”

Dune snorted, apparently amused by the quip, as they began to search the small building only to find a lone stormtrooper apparently doing the same. The dark-haired shock trooper dispatched him while Alax Vanda cleared the rest of the place. But just as they were about to leave and move on to the next building, the city shook.

_No. Not yet_ , she thought desperately. _It’s too early!_

The bombing had begun without warning. And before they even had a chance to process that fact, much less move out of the building to safer ground, another explosion rang out around them. If the bomb had hit the building they were in, they would have surely been killed on impact. But it must have only hit a few doors down at most, for the wall nearest to where Alax Vanda stood buckled and collapsed.

She had no time to react. There was a sharp pain in her leg, then the world went black.

~

Cara Dune was pissed.

Ridding the town of stormtroopers had sounded like nothing short of a fun time. And it had been fun, while it lasted. But the mission brief had mentioned nothing like this, and this was decidedly _not_ fun.

_Fucking bombs?_ she thought bitterly as she pulled herself up and dusted herself off after the explosion crumpled the building she and the rookie trooper Alax Vanda had found themselves in. _Really?_

Cara looked herself over. Nothing broken or bleedi--wait, yes bleeding, but only from a small cut near her ear, covered in dirt and dust from head to toe but otherwise okay. She was lucky she hadn’t been standing next to the wall that was no longer a wall.

The same could not be said for Alax. The red-headed rookie dropper had just come to after being knocked out and didn’t even seem to realize she was injured until Cara began to speak, to reach out her hands to stop her from trying to sit up.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she advised. “Not unless you wanna lose that leg.”

“Huh?” Alax finally looked down at herself, horrified to find that the lower half of her right leg was pinned awkwardly under a huge slab of duracrete that was once part of the wall she’d been standing by. Cara saw the pain and nausea hit her all at once.

“If you throw up on me while I’m trying to give you this, I swear I will shoot you,” she warned, reaching into her utility belt for a stim pack. She pulled the cap off with her teeth and stabbed it into Alax’s thigh, watching the drug quickly work to relieve her pain, if only a little bit and for a little while.

“Thank you,” the rookie hissed, almost as if saying the words was more painful than the obviously broken leg.

“Don't thank me just yet,” Cara muttered, standing up again to assess the situation. “That relief ain’t gonna last long, especially if I can’t get this off you.”

Cara was strong, probably the strongest trooper in their unit, but even with all her muscles and effort she couldn’t move the slab. She lifted and grunted and tugged and cursed, but the thing wouldn’t budge even a millimeter. Alax was trapped, and apparently she knew it.

“Just go. Get yourself out,” she said despondently, in her confusing Core accent, avoiding eye contact. “But shoot me first. And when you get ba--”

“Okay, don’t be so dramatic,” Cara said, cutting off the pity party before it could really get started. This wasn’t an ideal situation of course, but it wasn’t completely hopeless yet. The bombs seemed to have stopped, and as long as someone eventually came around to help move the slab, they’d easily make it out alive. “I won’t leave you. If anyone’s alive once the job is done they’ll come back around and look for us.”

“They will?” The surprise in Alax’s voice caught Cara by surprise herself.

“Of course,” she said with a dry laugh. “What do you think this is, the Empire?”

“No! Why would I--”

“Joke, Vanda. That was a joke,” Cara assured her, trying not to think about how nearly everything this rookie said seemed...off. _Probably just the concussion_. “This might’ve been easier if you’d stayed knocked out.”

Alax kept quiet for a while after that, and Cara only felt slightly guilty about having shamed her into silence. But soon the rookie’s face began to grow pale, and she knew talking was probably the only way to keep her alert and moving enough to keep her blood pumping to her head and not quite so much out of the wound in her leg. She would have liked to splint the damn thing and wrap it, but all that duracrete in the way was making that impossible.

“Should try to see if anyone else is still breathing,” she said, looking around for any kind of communication equipment. Technically she could leave and check it out, but the possibility of running into a large number of Imps made that a less than ideal solution. “My comm got busted in the blast. Where’s yours?”

Alax cringed. “Attached to my right boot.”

“Of course it is,” Cara said with a sigh, irreverently shoving the dead stormtrooper aside with her foot to take a seat on the floor. “Guess we’re in for a wait, then.”

The rookie watched her, then her eyes settled on the buckethead. She stared at him for a long moment, then briefly closed her green eyes before speaking softly. “If you give me that helmet, I may be able to reprogram his radio to get a message out on the Reb--on... _our_ frequency.”

Cara looked to the Imp helmet and back to Alax. “Didn’t know that was possible.”

“It might not be,” the rookie said. “But what else is there to do?”

“Can’t argue with that.”

~

Nothing was going according to plan.

The bombs had come too early. The broken leg was clearly a setback. And Dune was far too sentimental to put Alax Vanda out of her misery and move on, despite the fact that they didn’t know each other at all.

She should have expected as much, but the pain was causing her to lose some focus on the line between where Alax Vanda ended and she began again. Her suggestion to Dune to shoot her would never have needed to be made if they’d both been Imperials. Protocol was unquestioned in the Empire. And the protocol for this situation would have condemned her -- broken and helpless as she was-- to death. She tried not to think too hard about that as Dune unceremoniously popped the helmet off the fallen stormtrooper and handed it over. It may have been beyond Alax Vanda’s stated skill set to be able to reprogram the communicator, and it was definitely out of her own character to even try, but as she’d said there wasn’t much else to do. Not if Dune refused to kill her.

As she tinkered with the device, the shock trooper with her began to grow fidgety. She found something sturdy to prop the injured soldier up on so she didn’t have to lay awkwardly on the floor, then poked through every other nook and cranny of the room they were stuck in before finally resigning again to her seat on the floor.

“Look, I’m not much of a talker and I don’t think you are either,” Dune said, “but I might just die of boredom before anybody gets here to help us, so...how about we talk?”

The spy froze. She’d very deliberately not been a talker among the Rebels even when she had full control of her faculties. Between the pain and the drugs in her now, the odds that she’d give something away to Dune if they sat and talked until help arrived were quite high. _Maybe she’ll decide she wants to shoot me after all_.

“I don’t have a lot to say,” she finally answered, continuing to mess with the helmet though no longer truly focused on it.

“That’s okay. We can start out simple,” Dune assured her. “I just feel like I don’t know anything about you. How long have you been with the Alliance?”

She had to fight to keep her face neutral despite the instinct to scowl at the word, long enough to recite her prepared answer. “Since just after the liberation of Lothal.”

“That was before Scarif, right?” the shock trooper asked, and she nodded in response. “That’s longer than a lot of us. Longer than me.”

“When did you join?” she asked, not terribly interested in the answer but preferring to be the one asking the questions over answering them.

For a fleeting moment Dune’s face grew hard, harder than usual even. Her eyes narrowed, lips pursed ever so slightly, and her hands balled up into fists, all for just an instant before returning to normal.

“Right after Alderaan,” she said simply. “Guess we both had pretty direct motivation.”

The spy was confused for a moment, then realized the meaning behind her words. Alax Vanda’s motivation to join the Rebels, supposedly, was the loss of her family on Lothal. Cara Dune’s motivation, it seemed, was the loss of....well, everything.

“You were from...?”

“Yeah. But I don’t wanna talk about that,” Dune said, and she didn’t argue. She didn’t want to talk about it either. The Empire’s use of the Death Star on Alderaan had been a major blunder, in her opinion. Taking out the planet had had no real military significance, and all it seemed to do was motivate more worlds and more people to join the Rebellion. The Death Star itself could have been a useful tool, but it had been destroyed only days later. _Such a waste_.

None of that was relevant to this conversation, however. In this instance, she had to make sure to appear more affected by the loss of the planet than the battle station that had destroyed it.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said stiffly, the words sounding foreign despite being in the same Galactic Basic she’d spoken all her life.

Dune seemed to catch onto that as well, chuckling slightly and shaking her head. “You know, you confuse me. How does someone from an Outer Rim junkyard like Lothal have a Core accent?”

“My parents were from Coruscant,” she lied, happy to find it still came automatically. “That’s where I was born.”

“I see,” Dune said. “And...how is it that you joined the Rebellion so long ago but you’re only a rookie trooper?”

That was not a question Alax Vanda had yet had to answer. The story was ready to go, but no one in the squad had thought to ask yet, the trusting Rebels that they were. So eager to add anyone they could to their tedious uprising.

“Only recently became a soldier,” she stated, and right on cue managed to find the perfect setting on the helmet’s communication system. It crackled to life. “Spent most of my time as a tech.”

Dune raised her eyebrows in appreciation. “Lucky us. Can we get a message out?”

“Probably. But you have to put it on to scan through the frequencies and find out if anyone can hear you,” she said, tossing the helmet to the shock trooper.

“Yeah, no way am I putting this thing on,” Dune said with a disgusted but somehow amused face. “A guy died in there.”

She tossed it back and Alax Vanda caught it while attempting to match the other woman’s expression.

“So I have to do everything?”

Dune smirked. “That’s what rookies are for.”

If there was one rule that was true for both the Empire and the Rebels, it was that one.

Alax Vanda rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

With a moment’s hesitation to note just how strange it was for her to be putting one of these back on right in front of a Rebel she was trying to deceive, she slipped the helmet on and felt her field of vision shrink down once again to the narrow view in front of her.

“It’s a little bit wrong how well that fits you,” she heard Dune say, and was immediately thankful that her face was hidden by the mask. The stim was beginning to wear off and the pain from her leg seemed to be working its way up her body. Showing as much went against her very nature, whether she was pretending to be someone else or not.

She tried to ignore it as she worked through the frequencies and finally found one with a familiar voice on the other end. She explained the situation to their fellow trooper, then relayed his disappointing response back to Dune.

“He said it’s going to be a while,” she reported. “They’re still dealing with the Imps and trying to get people to safety. And any aerial search and rescue help has to wait until they’re sure there’s no more bombers hanging around.”

Dune cursed under her breath, then chuckled. “You just gonna leave that thing on the whole time then?”

“Oh.” She’d all but forgotten she was still wearing the helmet. Having worn one for so long in another chapter of her life with the Empire, it had been like an extension of her body. And for a moment, it had become that again. She pulled it off hastily, and Dune’s wry smile fell away in an instant.

“You’re not lookin’ so hot, rook,'' the trooper observed, her dark eyes filling with concern. “Still just as white as you were with the bucket on. Stim’s wearing off?”

“Yeah,” she admitted, the instinctual denial of pain giving way to the fire that seemed to be ripping its way through her leg.

“We’ve got one more. You want it?”

“No. Save it for--” She grunted as a wave of pain overcame her. “Save it for later.”

“You’re a lot tougher than I gave you credit for,” Dune said, moving away from where she’d been leaning against the wall to sit by Alax Vanda’s side. She dug through her pack for a ration bar and all but shoved it into her hand. “Here. Eat. Give your body something else to focus on for a while at least.”

“Thought you didn’t want me throwing up on you?” Alax Vanda said, noting how Dune didn’t move back to the wall, as she lifted the bar to her mouth with a shaky hand.

“Well, if you still think I should shoot you, you just go ahead and do that,” the trooper said with a smile, and for the briefest of moments the pain seemed to ebb again.

Dune sat right there by her side for hours while they waited. And waited. And waited. There were long periods of silence between them, but each time the pain threatened to overcome her, the shock trooper would start up the conversation again. Thankfully she didn’t press Alax Vanda to speak much herself, just tried to keep her distracted with stories of her own. Around the time she finally gave in and accepted the second stim, Dune had run out of war stories and moved on to talking about her home world, about Alderaan. At first it just sickened the spy to hear about the planet her Empire had destroyed. It may have claimed to be a peaceful world, but its leaders had been in open rebellion against the Emperor. She had no pity for such a place. But hearing Dune speak about it, and seeing the reverence and emotion with which she talked about all the people she’d lost there, eventually began to stir up an unfamiliar feeling within her.

Was it sympathy? Regret? Guilt at being on the side responsible for all this person’s pain? Perhaps a combination of all three. She couldn’t be sure, as she was inexperienced with any of those emotions. But she knew it was almost as uncomfortable as the broken leg. And she also knew, though couldn’t explain why, she’d rather die than be responsible for causing this woman any more suffering.

By the time she passed out from the combination of exhaustion and pain, with Dune’s hand gripping hers as she begged her to stay awake, she’d already begun considering telling her the truth about Alax Vanda.

When she woke up again she was lying not in the bombed out building, but on a repulsor gurney about to be loaded onto a ship. And Dune was still right there. A medical droid was speaking to her, asking questions about something or other as it tended to her mangled leg, but Alax Vanda wasn’t listening.

“Dune,” she weakly called back to the other woman as the gurney moved away from her toward the ship. The shock trooper followed, and finally the spy allowed herself to speak sincerely to her. “Thank you.”

Dune smiled, and, in a move they would both come to think about often for years after the fact, leaned down to kiss her lightly on the forehead.

“You can call me Cara.”

~

A couple months later she finally had the opportunity to complete her mission. But by then, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

A lot had changed since the bombing, and the cybernetic lower leg she now sported as a replacement for the real one that had been beyond saving was only the beginning. Cara had come to check on her as often as she could manage during her recovery, and in that time they’d continued to get closer. She’d developed a fondness for the woman, more than just an appreciation for what she’d done to save her life. More and more she was speaking to Cara as herself, rather than as Alax Vanda. But at the same time, the idea of really being Alax Vanda was growing more appealing in itself. She hated the feeling that she was lying to the only person she’d ever known in her life to show genuine concern for her, who’d essentially risked her own life just to make sure she didn’t die alone and in pain.

And from what she observed of them, any of the other Rebels would have done the same. What she’d once perceived as a weakness, a pointless sentimentality contrary to the objective of military success, now seemed like a positive quality. The Rebels all had a reason for fighting this war, and it was as simple as protecting the life of the person they stood next to. Not loyalty to one leader, not a lifetime of training that told them to do so. Just the desire to make life better for their families and friends. It was still a hopeless undertaking, but at least now she was beginning to understand why they continued to fight in spite of that fact. And maybe it wouldn’t hurt if she could find a way to provide a little more hope to the cause.

She was deep in thought about it all, not focused in the slightest on the task at hand, when Cara interrupted her physical therapy session.

“How’s the leg?” the shock trooper asked enthusiastically, breaking her from her thoughts.

Alax Vanda looked up at her, then down at her inhuman limb, wiggling it awkwardly. “Not mine.”

“Isn’t that the point?” Cara observed, and she shrugged her agreement. “Could be worse.”

“I don’t think you get to say that,” she replied with a hint of a grin.

“I mean, you could be dead,” the trooper pointed out. “Or it could have been your arm or something. With the leg you can still do everything you always did, but I hear even with a new hand you don’t get back the ability to feel things.”

“Guess that’s not a bad point,” Alax Vanda admitted, then ran her hands over the metal table she sat atop, really feeling the cold smoothness of it. “Don't think I’ve ever really appreciated the ability to feel things before.”

“Well, better late than never,” Cara said with a smile, and for a moment the spy was lost in the memory of how it had felt when the trooper had held her hand, when she'd kissed her head.

The moment was interrupted by an announcement over their intercoms, alerting them to an upcoming briefing of high importance. They reported to the briefing tent, along with the rest of their unit, and there they were given the information she’d been waiting months to hear.

Hoth. The new Rebel base had been completed on an icy planet in the Hoth system, and that’s where they were headed the following day. The other soldiers celebrated the information, happy to know they were finally about to have a real base again rather than the temporary camps they’d been resigned to for some time now.

But Alax Vanda didn’t join in their delight. The spy knew her orders, knew what she had to do now, but she didn’t think she could bring herself to do it. These people had saved her life, had made her feel like she belonged with them. How could she condemn them to death so soon after that by telling the Empire what she knew? How could she do that to Cara?

They were dismissed with orders to get packed and ready to move out, and she wrestled with her thoughts the whole way back to her tent. Betraying the Empire by not reporting the information would be a death sentence for sure, if they ever found out. And she would be directly disobeying orders from her father, a man who would never have been so weak as to let the Rebels affect his emotions. No matter what she did now, she knew she could never look him in the eye again. He would know she’d hesitated. And he’d kill her for it. He’d know her programming had failed and he’d discard the defective asset so it couldn’t harm the Empire any more than it already had.

No, she couldn’t return to her father. But she didn’t deserve to get away with this and everything else she’d done, to say nothing and carry on with her new life within the Alliance. If she wanted a fresh start, she’d have to come clean.

As she got to her tent and unlocked the case containing the encrypted communicator she used to send information back to her handlers, she knew what she had to do. She would send the Imps running in the wrong direction, then she’d tell Cara the truth.

“Agent Eclipse to the _Executor_. This may be my last transmission,” she reported, her voice shaking with nerves. “I’ve just been informed of the location of the new Rebel base. They’re on....the-the Rebel base is--”

Before she could get the lie out completely, the communicator exploded in a flash of red light. Startled and horrified, she looked up to see Cara in the opening of the tent, her blaster raised and primed to take another shot.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing,” the shock trooper demanded through her teeth, her eyes revealing the mix of emotions she was feeling, anger and hatred laced with disappointment and pain.

“Cara this is--it’s not what it looks like, I can--”

“Not what it looks like? It looks like you’re sending our location to the fucking Imps, Alax. It looks like you’re a fucking spy.”

“No, I wasn’t going to tell them wh--”

Another blaster shot whizzed by her head, blowing a hole in the back of her tent.

“Get the hell out,” Cara ordered, and she knew better than to take it as a suggestion. She slowly moved out of the tent with her hands raised as the trooper’s blaster remained trained on her. “Go. Before I kill you. Go.”

“Cara, just let me explain. I swear I wasn’t--”

One more shot, and suddenly the top of her shoulder was burning.

“Go!”

She didn’t need to be told again. Didn’t need to hear the pain in Cara’s voice again.

She ran, straight into the nothingness of the desert that surrounded the camp, as far and as fast as the metal leg would take her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Comments and/or tumblr messages make me very very happy.


	2. Missed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seven years later, a not-so-happy reunion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just forget everything from the last five or so minutes of Chapter 12 of the show (basically everything after Mando takes out the TIEs) and insert the rest of this.

**~10 ABY~**

Cara was terribly disappointed with how fast the high from taking out the Imperial lab on Nevarro had faded.

She’d hoped Mando would stick around for a while. She wanted to really catch up with him on how his quest was going and show him more of the town. And of course she wanted to spoil the kid and maybe even get in a rematch of the arm wrestling contest that had never been finished. But she guessed she couldn’t blame him for wanting to get as far away as possible now that they knew Moff Gideon was still alive.

That was the other wrinkle that was bringing her down. For months now they’d all assumed the man was gone, never to bother them again. She and Karga had turned Nevarro around in that time, taking it from a scummy bounty hunters’ hive to a thriving hub of life and trade. Cara wouldn’t say it out loud to anyone but Greef, but she worried that this development would put not only Mando and the kid but their city, their people, at risk of retaliation by Gideon and his servants.

And even worse -- in the short term at least -- it had brought the New Republic right to their front door.

The patrol of X-wings was one thing, but the moment the antique Alderaanian escort frigate landed outside the city gates next to them, her nerves were suddenly on high alert. The ship was a relic of her long lost homeworld, but it had been upgraded and painted with the bright, hopeful colors of the New Republic’s seal. Whoever it belonged to must have been either highly sentimental or a real piece of work. She hoped it was no one she knew. Karga had taken care of the clerical concerns regarding her chain code, but that wouldn’t help her much if someone who actually knew her real story came knocking.

On the other hand, they did just destroy an Imperial facility for them. And maybe that -- plus the information they had on Gideon -- would be enough to buy her freedom permanently.

She and Karga agreed to cooperate with the X-wing pilots, neither of whom she knew, and they were escorted onto the frigate and made to sit for an extended period of time in what looked and felt like some sort of interrogation hold.

“What do you think they’re more concerned about, Mando or the Imperials?” Karga asked in a bored tone, and Cara felt compelled to smack him on the arm.

“Would you shut up? They’re probably listening,” she chastised. He apologized and shut his mouth, but she couldn’t help but ponder his question. Mando hadn’t really elaborated on his “run-in” with the New Republic, but considering the shape of the _Razor Crest_ when he’d shown up, she had to assume it wasn’t a very friendly interaction. Whatever the reason, it didn’t seem like a good sign that the New Republic was suddenly making house calls to the Outer Rim.

Another half an hour of waiting went by before the marshal had had enough.

“Alright, screw this,” Cara said, shoving away from the table they were seated behind and beginning to head for the door. “We’re not under arrest, they can’t keep us here.”

Karga stood up to follow her, but just before they reached the door to the hold, it wooshed open. And on the other side stood the last person Cara ever expected to see commanding a New Republic ship.

“Cara Dune,” Alax Vanda said slowly, in the accent Cara had almost come to find endearing years ago but only grated on her nerves now. “It’s been a long time.”

She grinned slightly, but the expression was wiped off her face in a second, courtesy of the hardest punch Cara had landed in years.

~

Commander Alax Vanda’s life consisted of a series of routines.

It was one of the few aspects of her past life, her past self, that she had deemed appropriate enough to maintain once she’d become someone new. The difference was, she was now the one in control of what her routines were, not the Empire.

For years now, her routines had been fairly unencumbered. She’d wake up early after a restless sleep, run through a series of exercises to keep herself fit, shower and eat, then report to her superiors in the New Republic to serve in whatever way she could. Rinse, repeat, and hope for a few minutes to hours each day to check in on her side project. Rarely did her routine become interrupted. Rarely did something happen that she wasn’t prepared for.

The trip to the Outer Rim world known as Nevarro had certainly become one of those rare times. In hindsight, that shouldn’t have surprised her, considering it had been the side project that brought her there and upended the routine in the first place. The moment she’d seen the preliminary report about the destruction of the Imperial base, she knew she had to see it for herself, had to speak to the people responsible.

But of course, no routine could have prepared her for what she saw when the security feed from the _Eclipse_ ’s interview room showed who that was.

She didn’t recognize the man on the grainy footage, but the woman was unmistakable. Alax’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of Cara Dune, a sight that had only lived in her dreams and memories for the past seven years. It didn’t seem possible that she was actually there, on her ship, waiting in her interview room. She was so caught up in the shock and in the joy over seeing her alive that she didn’t even stop to think about the fact that Cara would _not_ be as happy to see her.

“Cara Dune,” she said with a grin upon entering the room. “It’s been a long time.”

And Cara’s response, appropriately, was to punch her square in the mouth.

Alax reeled, holding her face gingerly while making sure all her teeth were still intact. She spit out a mouthful of blood and chuckled lightly to herself.

“Apparently not long enough,” she said, steadying herself against the wall. “I had hoped we could at least talk a little before it came to that.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Cara spat back, her face the picture of rage. She looked like she was about to go in for another shot but was thwarted by Carson and Wolf, the X-wing pilots who’d brought them in.

“Stand down, boys. It’s my fault,” Alax said, and the pilots released her. “I should have known trooper Dune here hadn’t missed me.”

“Oh you’re wrong, Alax,” the Alderaanian countered. “I did miss you. But you’re well within my range now and my aim has only gotten better.”

The former Imperial spy couldn’t fight the wry smile that crept across her face.

“Yes, there’s the Cara I remember. Sharp as a vibroblade and twice as lethal.” She rubbed the spot where the base of her neck met her shoulder, where a scar from a long ago blaster bolt was hidden beneath her collar. “I have always wondered how a sharpshooter like you managed to miss from so close. Or maybe...you didn’t miss at all?”

The rage was replaced by another emotion on Cara’s face for the span of about a millisecond, but within a blink it was back. She tore her angry stare away from Alax and addressed the pilots.

“Do you have any idea who you’re working for?” she asked, and they shared a puzzled look between them. “‘Commander Vanda’ here is a fucking Imp. A spy. You’re working for a spy.”

Alax blinked in confusion. “Hold on. You still think...You mean they never told you?”

“Told me what?”

“Cara, I haven’t been on the side of the Empire for years,” she said, watching as the other woman’s face remained etched with anger. “Not since...well, since we last saw each other.”

For a moment the former shock trooper seemed to evaluate what she’d just been told. Alax had assumed she’d already known. Ever since the early days of the New Republic, her defection from the Empire had been a fairly widely known story within the Alliance. Through the end of the war she’d remained an Imperial in name only, serving as a spy for the opposite side of the one she’d previously been on. And all because of that day she’d lost her leg. All because of Cara Dune.

But Cara didn’t even know. Nor did she believe it now.

“Forgive me if I don’t just take your word for that, Imp trash.”

~

Alax seemed to take her name-calling in stride, which only angered Cara more.

She’d shaken off the punch and the insult and was still looking at her as if she was a long lost friend, instead of someone she’d betrayed in perhaps the worst possible way. Even if what she was saying was true -- that she’d left the Empire years ago -- it didn’t change anything. She’d still lied for them, killed for them, told them the location of Echo Base so that the Rebels had to abandon it just months after it had been established. She’d still made Cara trust her, only to turn around and betray that trust at the first available opportunity.

In her anger, Cara had all but forgotten where she was and that she hadn’t arrived there alone, but Alax eventually did remember.

“Carson, take the magistrate here outside and leave us to speak alone for a bit, would you?” she suggested quietly, and the pilot with the gray beard escorted Karga out as ordered, leaving the two of them to stare at each other with widely differing emotions in their eyes. Alax sat down at the table and crossed one knee casually over the other. She gestured invitingly to a seat opposite her, but Cara was focused on the sight of the metal prosthetic that peeked out beneath the hem of her trouser leg.

She couldn’t count the number of times over the past seven years that she’d thought about the day Alax had lost that leg, how many times she’d cursed herself for not heeding the signs. In hindsight it had almost been painfully obvious that the so-called rookie trooper hadn’t been what she said she was. And if Cara had only been paying attention, it might have saved her and the Alliance a lot of unnecessary pain.

“I should have left you in that bombed out building,” she finally said, her voice dripping with disdain as she scowled at the Imp in front of her.

“I agree,” Alax said, and Cara had to make a real effort to keep from looking surprised. “That’s exactly what I deserved. Over the years I’ve wished you had more times than I can count. If the day ever comes when you get the opportunity again, I’m sure you won’t hesitate.”

“I won’t.”

“Nor should you. But until that day comes....we need to work together.”

Again Cara was surprised by what she was hearing, but she knew better than to let on. After all, Alax had long ago proven herself to be adept at lying, at acting. Nothing she said could be trusted.

She scoffed. “Work together? Me and you?” Alax nodded. “Give me one good reason.”

“Because I suspect we still want the same thing,” the red-headed commander said, her voice deep with seriousness.

“And that is...?”

“Freedom from the Empire. For everyone. Permanently.”

Cara shook her head as she stared at her. “You _are_ the Empire, Alax. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to believe you’ve changed? Do you think I’m that desperate that I’d trust you again?”

Alax’s green eyes fell shut for a moment and a mournful frown crossed her face. “I wish they’d told you. I’ve always known you’d be upset if our paths ever crossed again, but I didn’t expect to have to convince you that I’m on your side now,” she said sadly. “Why didn’t they tell you?”

“Who?”

“Anyone. All of the Alliance high command knew what I was doing by the end of the war. After Jakku, when I left the Empire for good, I asked them specifically to get word to you. I thought if anyone had the right to know, it was you.”

“Oh you did, huh? You thought if somebody told me you’d realized you were on the losing side and decided to switch over that it would all be okay? You thought what, that I’d forgive you?”

“No, Cara,” Alax said softly, eyes shining with what might have been tears. “I never expected forgiveness. I wouldn’t even want it from you, I know I don’t deserve it. But you never let me explain myself.”

Cara tried her best not to be swayed by the sadness in the green eyes boring into her, or by the curiosity she felt after years of being left with no answers. Before she let herself give in to them, she remembered how she’d felt the last time she saw the Imp in front of her. Hurt, disgusted, betrayed, enraged. All those feelings were just as fresh now as they’d been seven years ago, and no amount of sad looks from Alax would make that go away.

“I don’t think anything you say could change my mind,” she said finally.

“You might be surprised....We didn’t all have the fortune of being born on the right side of the fight,” Alax said before looking away with a disgusted frown that only enraged Cara further.

“I don’t give a drop of bantha shit where you were born,” she snapped. “You told them about the base! _You_ made that choice!”

“But I didn’t tell them, Cara. It wasn’t me. I did what I could to keep them from finding out, but they found it by chance. Probe droids or something, I don’t know, but it was not me. I swear on my life.”

“That’s not worth a whole lot to me.”

“It was worth enough to let me go.”

Another quick retort died on Cara’s lips as Alax’s response hit her like a punch in the gut. The Imp pulled back her collar, revealing a dark scar on her shoulder while her eyes remained fixed on hers.

“The base’s location could have died with me. A few inches higher and this blaster bolt you hit me with makes sure of that,” Alax continued. “But you miss from three feet away? Give me the chance to run? Why do that, if my life was worth nothing to you?”

Cara had no response. Over the years she’d wondered countless times what had made her make that decision, why she’d let her go. Even after all this time and all that second-guessing, she still didn’t truly think she’d made the wrong choice.

But that didn’t mean she was ready to let Alax off the hook.

“I never said it was worth nothing. I said it wasn’t worth much,” she said, dodging the question. Alax let out a breath in the form of a wry laugh and shook her head, but Cara suddenly felt the need to be anywhere else. “Am I under arrest, ‘Commander’?”

“Well I’ve got a bloody lip that says you probably should be,” Alax said. “But no, I suppose I can forget about that, under the circumstances.”

“Fine,” Cara said, going for the door. “See you around, Alax.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one's short. Next time we really get into it.


	3. Two Things

Cara cursed under her breath as she closed yet another wrong compartment in Karga’s office. Wherever he’d moved his secret stash of spotchka to after she’d last gotten into it, it was far more elusive than the previous three spots.

She couldn’t quite believe how the day had gone, and she wanted nothing more than to get drunk enough to forget it entirely. She’d thought about calling up one of the last couple of contacts she had from her days with the Alliance to ask if they knew anything about what Alax had told her, but she ended up telling herself she didn’t want to know. What would it change if she had been telling the truth anyway? Imp or not, Cara was determined to forget about Alax Vanda forever.

But the day had long since ended and the Alderaanian frigate had shown no signs of leaving anytime soon.

Karga’s voice startled her from her bitter thoughts about it just as she ran out of places to look.

“Do you wanna tell me what that was all about earlier?” he asked, then held up the enormous jug of shining blue liquid when she turned around. “And why you’re trying to raid my stash?”

“Not really,” Cara answered, grabbing the jug as he offered it and drinking a large swig straight from it. Karga shook his head at her as he shoved a cup into her hand.

“Too bad...I was rather hoping to get some questions answered.”

“Why didn’t you ask her? You were in there long enough.” After Cara had left the frigate, he had been called in for a conversation with Alax and hadn’t come out for quite some time. Long enough that she’d started to grow wary about what they might have been saying to each other.

“Well she didn’t say anything about you and I didn’t ask. You said she’s Imperial, so I kept my yap shut.”

Cara sighed. “She might not be an Imp after all,” she muttered, not terribly happy to admit the possibility.

“Okay now you’re just trying to confuse me.”

“It’s complicated,” she said, and there wasn’t much else she could say without getting into details she’d rather not share with Karga at this point. The old man was more nosy than he ought to have been, in her opinion. “What did she say?”

“Just...asked me about destroying the base, and if I’ve seen any other Imperial activity or stuff that seems out of place,” he reported with a shrug. “She said she’s been keeping track of incidents like that, trying to hunt down the last of the remnants in the Outer Rim. Do you believe her?”

Cara took a few sips of her drink as she silently considered his question. It really was the question of the day -- did she believe Alax Vanda, or had she learned her lesson the first time? If she really thought about it, there were things Alax had said that seemed to have merit. Cara never actually did hear her give the Empire the location of the base, and if Alax had done so right after they last saw each other, as she always assumed, then the Imps wouldn’t have waited months to attack. And if she really had told members of the Alliance high command to get word to Cara after the end of the war, well...it wouldn’t have been their fault that she hadn’t stuck around long enough to actually hear it.

But those things could merely have been coincidences. Or lies as convenient as the ones she’d told all those years ago.

“I guess maybe the better question is, do you even _want_ to believe her?” Karga said wisely after she’d taken too long to respond.

Cara did know the answer to that, without question. Everything had been easier when she had no reason to doubt that Alax Vanda was nothing more than Imperial trash.

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t think I do.”

“You might wanna tell her that, then,” Karga said, and Cara shot him a confused look. He pointed past her toward the open door, where Alax was waiting just outside.

She looked apologetic, almost timid, as she stood there with her hands in her pockets. She’d changed out of her New Republic commander’s duds and put on some more casual civilian attire, but she was still so well put together that Cara felt justified in continuing to hold on to her doubts about her allegiance. Her clothes were completely free of wrinkles, her boots had been shined to perfection, and not a strand of her dark red hair (much darker than when they first knew each other) was out of place. No one that wasn’t an Imp ever put so much effort into looking that neat and perfect.

“I thought I made it pretty clear I didn’t want to see you again,” the marshal said, the scorn returning to her voice.

“Oh. I must have misinterpreted what ‘see you around’ meant, then...” Alax said. She took a cautious step inside but stopped in her tracks as Cara’s hand drifted toward the blaster at her hip. Her own hands went up defensively and for a moment Cara felt like they were about to replay the events of the last time they’d seen each other before that day. “Please, Cara. Just give me five minutes. After that if you still want me to go, I’ll go. I swear.”

Her green eyes were soft and pleading, desperate but genuine, and Cara hated herself for how easily she gave in to them.

“Two things.”

“Name it.”

“First....I reserve the right to shoot you,” she listed, and enjoyed the startled look that crossed Alax’s face. She shook it off after a nervous gulp.

“That’s fair. What else?”

Cara stepped toward her so she could really look into her eyes, so she could see if the other woman was lying.

“Did you have anything to do with Alderaan?”

This time it wasn’t surprise in Alax’s eyes, but rather a look of pure sadness. “No,” she said, her voice heavy with emotion. “I was nowhere near it. And if Tarkin had still been alive after I met you, I...I probably would have hunted him down and killed him myself.”

The last part seemed a bit overkill to Cara’s ears, but her eyes told her that Alax was telling the truth. Rather than respond, she simply nodded and stepped past her to go outside. She felt the other woman follow her, and they walked silently through the town all the way to the city gate. Cara leaned against one side of the opening, and Alax took up the job of holding up the other.

It was getting late, but the town was still bustling with activity, alive with chatter and distant music. The commander looked back over the street at all of it and seemed to smile.

“I spoke with some of the people here today,” she finally said. “They say you’ve been keeping this town clean almost single-handedly. They say Marshal Dune is the reason Nevarro is thriving.”

Cara could only shrug with disinterest as Alax turned that smile back to her. “I do what I can.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Alax said, then the smile faded abruptly. “But you may not be able to keep it up on your own forever.”

“Not really any of your business whether I can or not though, is it?” Cara asked rhetorically, wondering how much of the allotted five minutes the commander planned to waste on cutting her down.

“It might be,” Alax countered. She took a deep breath and looked back at the town before continuing. “There’s something going on out here, Cara. They don’t believe it on the Core Worlds but it’s true. These run-ins with the Empire, they aren’t isolated incidents. They need to be stopped before it’s too late. Now, I’ve been working to track down and take out the remnants on my own, but I can’t do that alone any more than you can keep this place safe from them alone. I think it would be beneficial to both of our causes....if we put aside our past and worked together.”

She finished by fixing her eyes on Cara with a determined intensity, but the Alderaanian could only stand a moment of it before she had to turn away. Looking over the town herself, she saw the happy faces of the people that lived there, the people she protected. She saw the lights and the bright colors of the tents over the market stands, a sign of just how much had changed since she’d first arrived on the world. Her eyes drifted to the school, the former common house that she and Mando and Greef and the kid had nearly met their deaths in. Only a couple of days ago they’d been rocked by the knowledge that the man who’d been responsible for that near-death experience wasn’t dead himself, as they’d long thought. Gideon was still out there somewhere, still looking for Mando, still hunting for the kid. And if he couldn’t find them, it was only a matter of time before he came back to Nevarro, and tried to get some information out of the only people he knew that might be of any help.

What would happen to these people then? What would happen to her town, the place she’d dedicated her new life to? She couldn’t foresee a scenario in which the answer was anything short of terrible. And she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she allowed that to happen.

Even if preventing it meant making an ally out of someone she fundamentally hated.

“Two things,” she said again, and the side of Alax’s mouth turned up with a slight smirk.

“Name it.”

“I still reserve the right to shoot you,” Cara said, counting off on a finger.

The commander’s smirk grew as she nodded. “Of course.”

“And,” the Alderaanian continued, “you have to tell me...everything.”

The smirk disappeared and Alax stared at her sincerely.

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted the chance to do.”

~

Alax couldn’t quite shake the odd sense of nervousness she felt as she left the _Eclipse_ to go into town again the next morning. She’d agreed to meet back up with Cara in the magistrate’s office to explain everything, to come clean about her past, to tell her life’s story if that was what she wanted. She had wished for this opportunity for so long, but now that it was upon her she only felt anxious.

What if nothing she said made a difference? What if Cara’s mind had been made up about her seven years ago and all her explanations and apologies couldn’t change anything? Based on the past day’s interactions, that seemed the most likely scenario. And a perfectly reasonable one. She didn’t deserve the Alderaanian’s forgiveness or really even the chance to make those apologies. Cara had been left with nothing and no one after Alax’s Empire had destroyed her home world. And in the end it didn’t matter whether or not she’d been the Imp directly responsible for it.

But she’d already agreed to tell her everything, so it was too late for second thoughts.

Alax found Cara seated at the desk in the magistrate’s office, reclining in the seat with a cup of caf in front of her and a handful of something or other. A little brown rodent with red eyes was standing on its hind legs on the desktop, and she tossed it a piece of the food she was holding. The animal caught it in its mouth and chittered happily.

“Friend of yours?” Alax asked, and the marshal’s head snapped up to see her in the doorway.

“Maybe,” she replied. The creature scrambled up to sit on her shoulder and she held up her hand to feed it directly.

“Cute.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Cara warned, then shrugged the shoulder it sat on. “Go on, Git.”

The animal did as ordered, leaving the two of them alone with an awkward silence hanging in the air. Eventually the marshal got up, mumbling something about Karga getting mad about her stealing his seat, and they exited the office to sit outside. Again the silence settled in, as Alax didn’t know whether she was supposed to speak yet or not. But eventually Cara sighed deeply and gave her permission.

“Alright, get it over with,” she said, and the commander looked sideways at her. “Let’s hear it. The sob story. How you had a total change of heart and joined the side of the righteous.”

“That’s not typically how I refer to it, but I suppose the semantics are--”

“You make it _so_ difficult not to want to shoot you,” Cara said, cutting off her nervous ramble before it could really get started.

“I apologize,” Alax replied before taking a moment to calm herself. “It wasn’t a change of heart so much as...a reprogramming.”

“What, like for a droid?” the marshal asked with a sarcastic scoff.

“Might as well have been,” Alax said, somewhat to the other woman’s surprise. “Where do you want me to start?”

“How about at the beginning,” Cara suggested. “Tell me everything about Alax Vanda. And don’t lie to me.”

“Well...I could do that, or I could tell you about _me_.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Alax Vanda...started out as an alias. Starting there would leave out a lot of important parts.”

Cara rolled her eyes with impatience. “For kriff’s sake, then what is your real name?”

“I like to think that _is_ my real name,” Alax said with a momentary wry smile. “But for the sake of being able to start the story before you shoot me....Arani Hux. That’s the name I was given at birth. And if I’d had any other last name at that point, then maybe...everything could have been different. Maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long to realize I was on the wrong side.”

She trailed off with a glance down at her hands in her lap while the marshal squinted in thought.

“Hux....why does that sound familiar?”

“You must have been reading your reports. My father was Brendol Hux, commandant at the Arkanis Academy,” Alax explained. “The Rebels tried to get in and shut the place down on multiple occasions, and for good reason. The academy consistently turned out the most commanding and ruthless officers in the Empire. And my father’s division was especially notorious for its...brutality.”

The commander explained to Cara the rather unique methods her father -- better known at the academy as The Commandant -- employed in the name of creating the most loyal and effective soldiers in the Empire. The Commandant’s Cadets, as he called his cadre of special students, were made to prove themselves by killing a fellow cadet just to be accepted. And that was only the beginning of the horrors they would go on to commit in his name. Alax tried not to let the anger over her upbringing overtake her as she continued.

“I was part of it pretty much as soon as I learned to walk. It was training, obviously, but it was also...conditioning. Programming. We weren’t people, not even soldiers. We were assets, machines. Emotion, attachment weren’t ever an option. Neither was anything short of perfection, especially for me. If I came up even a fraction of a percent short of what was expected, it would reflect poorly on The Commandant. So I never did.” Alax paused when she realized she was clenching her fists so tightly her hands were beginning to cramp. “He wasn’t a father. Always a commanding officer. And yet I...always looked for the opportunity to prove myself to him.”

She shook her head bitterly at the thought, wondering how she ever could have wanted to do that when all she wanted now was to see the end of him. She’d nearly been successful once, but he’d gotten away. Hopefully the next time he wouldn’t be so lucky.

“That’s why I accepted the job of infiltrating a division of Rebel droppers in order to find out the location of the Alliance base,” Alax continued. “And that’s when everything changed, the moment that bomb hit. It’s ridiculous to say out loud but I’ve always....I’ve always thought it meant something that I lost a part of my body that day, but I gained a soul for the first time.”

“You’re right, that’s pretty ridiculous,” Cara said, abruptly reminding the commander that she had in fact been talking to someone else and not just rambling about her past to no one.

“Well it’s your fault. If you’d just shot me like I said, if you’d just treated me like the asset I was and not like a person, then...” She shook her head, unable to finish the thought. “But you did something no one had ever done, and I wasn’t ready for it.”

“What did I do?”

“You cared. You cared about me, about my life. It confused my programming. There were no protocols for that.” Alax looked up at Cara finally with a slight smile before continuing. “And from then on, I just...I knew I couldn’t do what I’d come to do. I couldn’t report the location of the base and send you and the rest of the unit to your deaths, not after you’d saved my life. When you found me with the communicator, I was just about to tell them to go somewhere totally different. I was going to send them as far from Hoth as I possibly could, and then tell you the truth.”

She grew silent after that, joining Cara in quiet thoughts, and couldn’t help but wonder how things would have been different if they’d only been able to have this conversation then, seven years ago. But that was a useless thing to wonder.

~

Cara had never been much of a talker, never liked holding long, drawn-out conversations or making small-talk, but she’d always been good for a snappy retort. In any situation, no matter how dire, how inappropriate it was for her to do so, she could find a joke or a comment to cut through an awkward silence.

But that ability failed her in the moment after Alax finished telling her everything from before and during the time they’d known each other.

“I was going to send them as far from Hoth as I possibly could,” Alax had said at the end of her story, “and then tell you the truth.”

But of course, Cara had never given her that chance. It was only now, seven years later, that the truth was coming out. And Cara had no idea how to feel about it. Assuming it _was_ all the truth, Alax was hardly the person she’d always thought she was. She wasn’t sure that changed anything, though.

“So what happened instead?” the marshal asked after both of them had been silent for a long moment, lost in their thoughts.

“Well...I ran. Eventually I just sort of passed out in the desert. Woke up to some bucketheads standing over me. Told them who I was and got taken to the nearest base to get patched up,” Alax said with an unconscious reach up to the scar on her shoulder, then rested her eyes again on her lap, where most of the story had been directed up to that point. “Long story short, I convinced the higher ups not to send me back to my father. But in return I had to basically start my career over at the bottom. That actually worked out though, because I had no desire to be in charge of anything. All I wanted was to be able to aid the Alliance from the inside, and I managed to do that. Through the end of the war, I sent back every bit of information I thought could help your side. And when it ended, I...faked my death and became Alax Vanda again. For good. Been working up through the New Republic ever since.”

She paused once again and Cara fought against her urge to ask about the death-faking as the commander turned her soft green eyes in her direction.

“I know that nothing I’ve done since we met can make up for the things I did before, but...I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try. Which wouldn’t have been a concern before I met you -- my life wasn’t something I valued more than anyone else’s. But like I said....you reprogrammed me.”

For once the eyes stayed locked with hers, and Cara almost let herself feel sympathy for the person behind them. She almost let herself wonder how she’d been able to do such a thing in such a short amount of time that they’d known each other. She almost let herself forgive the red-haired spy.

Almost.

“So how’d you end up here?” she asked instead, keeping her face and her voice steady despite the swirling thoughts and emotions inside her.

“I’ve been doing some...let’s call it overtime work, tracking Imperial movement in the Outer Rim,” Alax said vaguely. “This is where all the remnants settled down after the war. They were quiet about it for a good long time, long enough to lull the Republic to sleep, but they’re starting to make moves again. No one believes me on Chandrila but I know you know. The things I’ve seen...the things you’ve seen? You know as well as I do, it’s all starting again. I aim to end it before it has a chance to really get going. And if I can manage to kill my father along the way, well, all the better.”

The commander finished with a nonchalant shrug and once again Cara took note of the Imp-ness of the comment, the casual nature with which she spoke about getting the opportunity to murder someone. Although, if she was being honest, she understood the impulse and couldn’t blame her for wanting to. Especially if what she’d said about the man and his “training” methods was true.

“So what do you need from me?”

“Mostly, any information I can get on Imperial movements out here,” Alax answered. “But also, I’ve got a ship full of young, green New Republic fighters back there. They’re keen for action but they don’t get what’s going on, not really. I could use a soldier with your experience and skill. And...motivation.”

Cara considered the proposal for a moment. Her brain was still telling her this was a bad idea, trusting Alax and going off on some wild Imperial bantha chase. But her gut said it was the right move. And as she so often did when those two parts of her were at odds, she went with her gut. She opened her mouth to speak but Alax cut her off.

“Let me guess. Two things?”

The redhead was smirking, and Cara had to hold back a smirk of her own as she nodded.

“First...I’m not a soldier anymore. I will not be calling you ‘Sir,’” she said, and the commander chuckled and nodded herself. “And--”

“And....you reserve the right to shoot me. I got it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where I start cherry-picking the canon aspects I accept, sorry if that gets confusing. But anyway, please comment for the sake of my motivation.


	4. Knockdown

Stepping into the cockpit of the _Eclipse_ , Cara asked herself for at least the hundredth time over the past two days just what the hell she was thinking.

She’d left Greef behind on Nevarro, assuring him that everything would be fine and she could handle it, but now, standing there as Alax Vanda commanded the pilot to make the jump to hyperspace, she couldn’t help but think she should have at least taken a couple more days to consider it. But Alax had been so forthcoming, her story so compelling, that Cara had all but let her guard down. She told herself she was just doing this for her people, for her town, but she knew there was another side to it. She knew she was still too curious about the former spy to let it go.

Cara studied her as she spoke to the pilot and co-pilot about their destination, took in the perfectly pressed uniform, the polished shoes, the neatly combed and gelled hair, the rigid stance. The mercenary almost had to laugh looking at the way she held her arms behind her back, one hand grasping the opposite wrist.

She must have actually laughed out loud anyway, because Alax turned her head back to look at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Something funny, Marshal?”

“All these years finally on the right side,” Cara replied, looking her up and down pointedly, “but you are still _such_ an Imp.”

Alax cocked her head in offended confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well look at you. You still stand like an Imp, you’ve got Impy clothes, an Imp haircut--”

“Okay, I get the picture,” the commander cut her off in her fancy Core accent as she let her arms fall and turned back to look out the viewport.

“And there, you _sound_ like one. I don’t know how I didn’t clock you the first time you opened your stupid mouth--”

“Please stop now,” the commander requested politely and Cara did so, though the smirk that had affixed her face remained. Alax clearly took issue with being likened to an Imperial officer now that she was on the other side, even if the comparison was apt. The marshal was prepared to respect that, but she wasn’t above giving her a little more shit first.

“Speaking of that hair, wasn’t it a lot more orange before?” she asked, noting the dark red shade the commander now sported. Alax didn’t respond or even look back, but Cara noticed her jaw clench. “Didn’t like being a ginger?”

Alax chuckled dryly and shook her head. “Made me look too much like him.”

“Your father?” Cara asked after a brief moment of confusion, and finally Alax slowly turned around. She nodded stiffly, then gestured for Cara to follow her from the cockpit. They left the pilots alone and shut the hatch behind them, stopping to talk in the privacy of the corridor. “You said you still hope you get to kill him...how’d he survive the end of the Empire?”

Alax shrugged, finally abandoning the rigid, Imp-like posture to lean against the bulkhead with her arms crossed.

“Not entirely sure,” she said. “One of the first things I did when I officially joined the New Republic was lead a siege on Arkanis to try to shut down that academy and draw him out. We took the world, but he escaped somehow. Rumor was a bounty hunter smuggled him and my bastard brother off-world, but who knows.”

“Bastard brother?” Cara asked somewhat incredulously. That detail had been left out of their previous conversations entirely.

“Half-brother. Armitage. Just a boy, son of some kitchen woman that my father....” Alax trailed off with a disgusted shake of her head, and Cara got the feeling she’d rather not know what the end of that sentence had been. “I’d hoped to be able to get to him before Brendol did his work on him but...there’s no telling what our father will turn him into now that he has no one to answer to.”

“Yeah....sounds like a guy I wouldn’t mind killing myself,” the marshal mused, and Alax snorted before looking up at her with a grin.

“Get in line,” she said, and for a moment they just stood there, sharing a smile over the thought of murdering someone. Cara broke eye contact once she realized how deranged it was and Alax cleared her throat awkwardly. “Oh. Almost forgot. Got a present for you.”

She reached into her back pocket, pulled out a shiny metal object, and handed it over. It appeared to be a badge of some sort, in the shape of a pentagon and adorned with the same Rebel starbird that Cara had tattooed under her eye. The marshal held it reverently, slowly stroking a thumb over the symbol that had come to define her life. She’d given so much to the cause it represented, but hadn’t gotten much back in return. And despite what it meant to her, she had no desire to display it on her any more prominently than she already did.

“I’m not wearing that,” she said.

“Alright,” Alax replied simply, then shook her head as Cara attempted to return it. “No. Keep it, it’s yours.”

“But I don’t want it.”

“Then get rid of it. Want it or not, it’s yours. I don’t care what you do with it.”

The commander shrugged and Cara rolled her eyes. “Great. More shit to keep track of.”

“Yes, because you brought _so_ much with you,” Alax said sarcastically. She’d given Cara plenty of time to pack her things, but it had taken all of five minutes to throw her belongings into a single rucksack. “Why didn’t your little friend make the cut?”

“Greef?”

“No, the little...rat..weasel...thing.”

“You mean Git?”

“That’s its _name_? I thought that was just something you told it to do.”

“Well yeah, how do you think he got the name?”

Alax squinted skeptically at her. “Are you screwing with me?”

“I would never,” Cara answered a little too quickly, and the commander gave a doubtful look. “Okay yes I would, but in this instance I’m actually not. And damn, if I’d known pets were allowed on the ship I would have brought him.”

“Should we go back in there and tell them to turn around?” Alax asked, pointing her thumb toward the cockpit.

Cara knew she was joking but shrugged anyway. “You’re the commander.”

The other woman shook her head in amusement, and Cara couldn’t help but notice how odd it was that they’d so quickly gone from her punching Alax in the face to standing here joking with each other. It almost felt like it had before she’d learned the horrible truth, that Alax wasn’t who she’d said she was, when she had been beginning to think she’d made a real friend in the rookie dropper. But she’d been very wrong then. And even though it seemed to be different this time, she’d be damned if she let herself fall for it again.

Agreeing to join Alax to hunt down the Imps was one thing. Trusting her was a whole different story.

~

A few months in to their new partnership, Alax couldn’t have been happier with how things were going with Cara joining her crew.

They’d already used some of Alax’s previous sources to track down and dismantle a couple more Imperial outposts in the Outer Rim and with that information were about to stop on Chandrila to make a formal plea to the New Republic for additional troops and resources. She wasn’t too hopeful it would be successful, but she did believe that with Cara’s help they would continue to gather enough evidence to convince them. Eventually.

Aside from the work itself, she was pleased with how things were going with the Alderaanian on a personal level. Admittedly it wasn’t hugely different from when she’d originally agreed to the arrangement, but at least she’d progressed past the punching in the face and threatening to shoot her all the time stage. She knew Cara didn’t trust her. Not as much as she wanted anyway, not enough to call her a friend. But at least she didn’t seem to completely despise her anymore. Just more of a mild -- and perfectly justifiable -- hate.

Recently Alax had invited her to work out some of that hate, literally. The commander hadn’t had a really good sparring partner aboard the _Eclipse_ for quite some time, but the former shock trooper had jumped at the opportunity to fill the role. Any chance Cara got to take out some of her aggression and anger at Alax was one she appeared glad to accept.

But much to the Alderaanian’s chagrin, she hadn’t managed to land many actual blows.

“It’s not fucking fair,” she complained through heavy breaths in the middle of a hand-to-hand sparring session where she’d yet again been uncharacteristically knocked down, “you’re part robot.”

Alax looked at her in confusion until Cara nodded at her cybernetic leg.

“Oh please,” she said through a laugh. “If anything, that slows me down.”

“Krayt spit,” the marshal countered bitterly, picking herself up from the mat to get back in the fight.

Alax grinned, readying herself for Cara’s next move. “Just admit it. You’re too used to brawling. Not used to fighting anyone with experience anymore. Anyone with an actual strategy.”

As usual, she would come to regret egging her on.

“How’s this for strategy?” Cara quipped, then in a flash grabbed a sparring staff from the rack and swung for Alax’s shins, knocking her off her feet.

The commander fell with a grunt, then opted to continue laying on the mat. “Dirty, but not bad. Appreciate you hitting the fake leg this time.”

“Damn. Forgot which one it was,” Cara said, but between her smirk and the hand she extended to help her up, Alax guessed she was lying. She accepted the hand up, then got back into position, shaking her head when the marshal readied herself with the staff still in hand.

“Do I get a weapon too?”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

Cara didn’t even wait for her to finish shrugging before taking a swing at her head, which Alax ducked with ease. She continued swinging and jabbing and poking with it but the commander was too quick, dancing her way around the object to avoid getting hit despite Cara’s best efforts.

“Would you just stand still for two seconds?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“In me hitting you, obviously.”

After a few more misses, the Alderaanian had had enough. She growled in frustration, then, much to Alax’s surprise, chucked the staff at her face with both hands. The commander caught it, thankful for her quick reflexes, but failed to see what was coming next. Cara followed up throwing the stick by throwing herself at her, tackling her viciously with a breath-stealing blow to the gut. They hit the mat together, and suddenly Alax was pinned under the full weight of the larger woman, a strong thigh on each side of her torso. Cara sat back on her heels with a victorious roar, pumping both her fists in triumph.

Alax could only stare up from underneath her as she tried to get her breath back.

“Satisfied?”

“Not entirely, no,” Cara said, a slight smile on her lips.

The commander quirked an eyebrow at her but didn’t get the chance to find out what she meant, as a voice came over the communicator on her wrist.

“Coming up on Chandrila, sir.”

Alax sighed and responded to the pilot with thanks before addressing Cara again. “Hate to break it to you, but you can’t sit there all day.”

“I know. I just want you to remember this,” she said. “I can and will continue to kick your ass.”

She heaved herself up, pushing down on Alax’s diaphragm for leverage, forcing a grunt from the commander and leaving her breathless again.

 _Don’t you worry Marshal_ , Alax thought from the floor as she watched Cara leave the training room, _I won’t be forgetting that any time soon_.

~

Three hours after telling Alax she’d prefer to just wait on the ship while the commander reported to her superiors in the New Republic, the marshal had entirely run out of things to do to keep herself occupied. Everyone else aboard the _Eclipse_ had either gone with the commander or had otherwise left to spend some time outside, on solid ground for once. But Cara was wary of being seen out and about in a former capital of the Republic, so she was resigned to puttering around on the frigate while she waited for the rest of the crew to return.

She was relieved when the crew members began making their way back onto the ship one by one, and even more so when she heard Alax’s accented voice filling the nearest corridor. The sooner the boss was ready, the sooner they would leave Chandrila and she could breathe easier again.

Cara stuck her head out into the hall from the galley, where she’d been hanging out for a while, and made eye contact with the commander. Alax’s eyes lit up as she spotted her, but she was deep in conversation with another New Republic officer -- one who wasn’t part of their crew, but who Cara knew from years ago.

The marshal panicked, pulling her head back into the room and praying that her former squadmate, Davin Orum, hadn’t seen her. She left the galley through a different door and rushed to her quarters, trying not to look suspicious to the other crew members but preferring it to running into Alax and Davin. She shut herself in and kept her eye on the viewport, watching the boarding ramp of the _Eclipse_ until she saw the commander escort the man off the ship, at which point he disappeared into the rest of the crowd on the landing pad.

Confident that she was out of danger, Cara left her bunk and began to make her way back toward the training room. But of course, she ran right into Alax before she made it.

“Hey!” the commander exclaimed when Cara tried to just slip by her without talking. “Where did you go?”

“When?” the marshal replied, failing miserably at the feigned innocence she was going for.

“Just now, I was going to introduce you to someone and you just disappeared.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cara lied, and clearly Alax was aware, if the raised eyebrow she responded with was any indication.

“No? Sure it doesn’t have anything to do with why you wouldn’t go in there with me? Or why you’re literally the only person on board who didn’t leave the ship?”

Cara looked away to stare at her feet. “It might,” she admitted with a sigh. “Let’s just say...you wouldn’t have had to introduce me to Davin. We already knew each other.”

“And, what? You don’t like him?”

“I like him fine. Just don’t think he’d like me very much anymore.”

“Why?”

Cara took a moment to consider her answer. It was an easy one, but not one that was easy to admit, especially to Alax, who seemed to hold her in such high regard. She didn’t think she’d care so much about what the commander thought of her, but in that moment she knew she’d be disappointing her. And she couldn’t explain why that felt so awful. It must have been something about having lied to her, about being a hypocrite for hiding something about herself even after spending so much time hating her for doing the same.

“Because he was part of the last squad I was with in the war,” she confessed finally. “The one I....I deserted.”

As expected, Alax was completely shocked by the revelation.

“Deserted?” she echoed, then shook her head in disbelief. “No, your...your service record says you were discharged. With honors.”

“Yeah, and my chain code says I’ve been a fine, upstanding citizen of the New Republic ever since,” Cara said, shaking her own head when Alax nodded in agreement. “Forgeries. Karga helped me so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting arrested.”

“When did you...” the commander began to ask, but paused to think about it. Cara could see it on her face the moment the realization set in. “After Jakku. That’s why no one ever told you about me, isn’t it? You weren’t around.” The former shock trooper didn’t answer, and she had her confirmation. Her voice was almost desperate as she asked, “Why, Cara? I mean...you of all people? I don’t understand.”

There it was, the disappointment she’d expected. The Alderaanian couldn’t bring herself to look at her. Alax had turned her entire life around, rejected everything she’d ever been taught, even betrayed her own family, all because Cara had made her believe in the Alliance. She had every right to know why she’d stopped believing in it herself. But if Alax decided that her reasons weren’t good enough, it could be the end for her. Not for the first time since they’d been reunited, Cara was going to have to take a leap of faith. To trust her, even though history told her not to.

“I’ll tell you, if you promise not to turn me in.”

Alax made a sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff.

“Turn you--of course I won’t turn you in. I owe you,” the commander said, pointing to the scar at the base of her neck, a permanent reminder of the favor Cara had done her by not turning her over to the Alliance, or worse. “And I...I need you. They rejected my proposal.”

Alax hung her head, and Cara cursed at the news.

“Of course they did,” she said, feeling her anger boil up. “There, you see? That’s why, right there. It’s all politics now. The minute the war ended, they gave up trying to help anybody and just started fighting over who would be in charge. Didn’t even bother getting rid of all the Imps first.”

“That’s why we’re here,” the commander reminded her, but Cara wasn’t having it.

“Yeah, that’s why _we’re_ here. But they don’t care, do they? Doesn’t matter to them if we succeed or not, all the trouble is way off in the Outer Rim. It’s all so far from here.”

“Cara....”

“Don’t, Alax,” she warned. “You’ve got no room to judge me for--”

“I’m not. I would never...” Alax said, her voice and eyes soft, and Cara found herself believing her. “You’re right. I’ve been trying to tell them for a long time but they won’t listen. Why do you think I’ve been doing all this off the books?” She paused thoughtfully for a moment, then sighed. “Look, I know you only agreed to do this with me because you wanted to look out for your people. And I’d...understand if you wanted to go back to Nevarro and just try to take care of them from there. I’ll keep doing what I can to find the Imps and take them out myself.”

As she pondered the commander’s proposal, Cara could feel the weight of the metal object she’d carried around in her pocket since the day she’d first joined the crew of the _Eclipse_. She pulled out the badge Alax had given her, the one she’d refused to wear but could never seem to leave behind in her bunk. She knew that the new government it represented now was hardly worth fighting for, that it made sense just to go back and not give any more of herself to it.

But it wasn’t the New Republic she was doing this for, it wasn’t the politicians that she was fighting beside. It was her people, and it was Alax. Despite all her hesitations and perhaps her better judgement, Cara had come to enjoy working with the former Imperial spy. Alax was clearly so much more than she had ever allowed herself to believe she could be, and she wasn’t ready to leave and stop learning about her. Plus, she’d only just started to figure out how to take her down in a fight. She couldn’t leave now if she wanted to.

“Not a chance, Vanda,” Cara said finally, looking up from the badge with a glint in her eye. “You said it yourself. You need me.”

She smiled at the commander, and Alax returned the favor. “That I do.”

“Just...promise me that if there’s something we need to do that they wouldn’t like....you won’t stop me from trying to do it.”

“Cara, I’m not blindly loyal to this government. I learned that lesson once already,” Alax assured her. “I’m loyal to the people we fight for, so not only will I not stop you...I’ll be right there with you.”

“Well. Look at you,” Cara said as their smiles grew. “Finally starting to sound like a Rebel.”

Alax shrugged humbly. “I learned from the best.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a few more chapters of this but I don't know if I like it enough to keep going, so please tell me if I should keep going.


	5. Bad Day Medicine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will pay someone a dollar to leave a comment. Just one, I'm begging.

Cara had to admit one thing about how life was going since she’d joined Alax Vanda’s crew -- the work sure was thrilling.

Taking down thugs on Nevarro was honorable work itself, and just fun enough to keep her occupied. Mercenary life had been decent too, giving her no shortage of skulls to knock around. But none of that compared to getting to waste Imps on a regular basis again. The Alderaanian hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed the war, how purposeless her life had felt once the Empire at large had been defeated. She felt bad about it in a way -- obviously so many of her fellow Rebels had been lost to the conflict, and it was horrible of her to wish in any way that it had gone on longer. And yet if she was honest with herself, she knew nothing would ever get her blood pumping as much as hunting for surviving remnants of the Empire that had destroyed her home.

It certainly didn’t hurt either that Alax had really grown on her. Cara had given up trying to hold on to her animosity toward the former spy, realizing that it made the whole operation run a lot smoother when she didn’t second-guess the commander’s motivations at every turn. Now that they knew each other’s secrets they trusted each other, and now that they trusted each other they seemed to be working flawlessly together. Their combined smarts and complementary skills made them an efficient duo in a fight, and they enjoyed every minute.

At least until Cara almost ruined it.

They were working their way through another remnant base, trying to locate the reactor core so they could blow it up. Cara had asked once why almost every Imperial facility had power generators like that, a vulnerable point that just needed to be lit in order to take the whole thing down. Alax had just shrugged and said it never mattered to anyone within the Empire if they lost whole bases at a time. Another one would simply pop up within a month or two. But that had been the Empire at the height of its power. Taking them out this way now should be a more permanent act, she’d said.

With that in mind, they were in good spirits as they moved through the corridors taking Imps out on the way to the core.

“Have I ever told you you’re very good at that?” Alax asked after Cara had sniped a pair of stormtroopers in just two shots from clear down the hallway.

“Once or twice,” she responded with a satisfied grin. It was never easier to tell they were in the zone than once the compliments started flowing. Somehow they were able to read each other’s minds in the middle of a shootout or a fight, not needing to speak tactically, and once that happened the Imps in their way had no hope of surviving the day. Even when it was just the two of them against everyone.

“I know I shouldn’t be surprised anymore but it’s still impressive every time,” the commander observed as they cleared the hall and opened a door to another, at the end of which they hoped to find the control room.

“Don’t worry, I don’t get tired of hearing it.”

“What’s your secret?”

“If I told you, you’d have a higher kill count than me,” Cara said with a smirk. “Can’t let that happen.”

Alax shook her head in amusement. “Selfish.”

The marshal chuckled to herself as she got into position to keep watch while Alax entered the control room and retrieved the location of the reactor.

“Not the case anymore but for a while there the secret was that every time I shot a buckethead I imagined it was you,” Cara blurted out as soon as the commander returned to her side, and at that comment the mood changed. Alax stopped following, opting instead to stare at her with a pair of sad green eyes. “That, uhh...that was a joke, Vanda.”

“Yeah, I know,” the redhead said, rather unconvincingly. Cara opened her mouth to say something reassuring, but the commander shook her off. “Let’s just get this done and get out of here.”

“Alax, I didn’t--”

“It’s fine, Cara.”

Without another word they made their way to the reactor room. By the time they made it there seemed to be no Imps left, but the moment they opened the door Cara realized she’d been wrong in that assumption.

The sirens that warned of the base’s impending destruction began to blare, as a single Imperial officer stood by the computer terminal, blaster at the ready. The marshal was about to take him out and suggest a quick exit when Alax’s hand came up to stop her from raising her weapon.

“Wait,” the commander said, and Cara turned to look incredulously at her. But Alax wasn’t paying attention. Her eyes were fixed on the man in front of them, narrowing to get a closer look. She recognized him. “Jafen?”

The man’s face showed confusion for a moment, but after getting a good look at Alax he recognized her as well. His face twisted into a hateful scowl.

“You...” he sneered, steadying the blaster he had aimed at Alax’s head. “They said you were dead. But no, it’s worse than that. You’re a traitor!”

Cara sensed it coming a split second before the man pulled the trigger. In a flash she raised her own blaster and shot him in the hand, causing him to drop the weapon and cry out in pain. Almost as quickly Alax was on him, grabbing him by the front of his uniform and slamming him against the nearest wall.

“Where is he, Jafen?” she demanded. He didn’t answer, so she slammed him again and yelled this time. “ _Where is he?!_ ”

Jafen just continued to sneer at her. “I’ll die before I tell you. Traitor.”

“Not today, you won’t,” Alax countered, then reached back in hopes of punching out the man’s suicide pill tooth before he could break it. But just before she could deliver the blow, blaster fire filled the room.

A pair of stormtroopers had entered from the opposite door and started firing. Cara hit the deck for cover, waited for a pause, then popped up to take them both out. When she turned back, Alax and Jafen were both on the floor. The Imp was already dead, but the commander was screaming at him, spewing profanities Cara had never heard her use before and demanding that he get up and tell her where “he” was.

Growing more concerned about the ever-present blaring alarm, Cara cautiously approached her and for the first time noticed a fresh scorch mark on her back.

“Alax let it go,” she said, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her up. “He’s dead, you’re hurt, this place is gonna blow. We have to leave.”

“No.” The commander wriggled out of her grasp and darted for the computer that the man had been standing by when they’d entered. “He must have known. It must be somewhere in here. I can find him if I just--”

Cara grabbed her again and spun her around to speak to her face to face.

“It’s time to go. Whatever you’re looking for can wait.” She pointed toward the ceiling, where the loudspeaker continued to blare, and Alax finally got the message. She nodded in resignation, then brought her wrist to her face and tapped a button on the communicator there.

“Carson, we need that pickup. Now.”

“Roger that, boss.”

Ten minutes later the base was gone and they were safely traveling through hyperspace in Carson’s U-wing on the way back to the _Eclipse_. They sat on the floor on opposite sides of the troop hold, quiet for a good long while until Cara’s curiosity got the better of her.

“Who was that back there?” she asked quietly, and the commander sighed deeply before answering.

“Jafen Thiff,” she said, staring distantly at the floor. “One of my father’s most prized pupils.”

Suddenly the whole incident made sense. “That’s why you thought...”

Alax nodded slowly and finally looked up at her. “If anyone knew where Brendol ended up, it would have been Jafen.”

“I’m sorry,” the Alderaanian said sincerely. All Alax wanted in life was to end the Empire and to get rid of her father, and the best chance she’d gotten at the latter in years had just slipped right through her fingers. “I didn’t know it was--”

“It’s alright Cara,” she cut her off. “There’ll be another time. We did what we went there to do.”

Alax leaned back to sit against the wall of the ship but snapped back up with a hiss the moment she made contact. Apparently it had slipped both their minds that she’d been shot in the back. Cara got up to come to her aid.

“Here, let me patch that up.”

“It’s fine, it’s just a flesh wound.”

“Yeah and the last time you got your flesh wounded you ended up with a brand new leg, so maybe just shut up and let me do this.”

“Actually the last time was when you sh--”

“What part of 'shut up' did you not understand?” Cara cut her off as she knelt beside her, happy to then see a hint of a smile on the commander’s face for the first time since she’d made a very unfortunate joke about shooting stormtroopers. She cringed at the sight of the burn mark that had clearly gone through Alax’s jacket and shirt to the flesh under her right shoulder blade. “Take this stuff off, would you?”

Alax hesitated for a moment while Cara retrieved the nearest medpac. It wasn’t surprising that she was shy, the marshal mused. She’d grown up in a very strict culture. But it wasn’t until the commander’s back was exposed that Cara learned the real reason for the hesitation. It was almost difficult to find the blackened scorch mark left by the blaster bolt, as Alax’s back was almost entirely covered in a black tattoo -- a giant Rebel starbird. The same symbol that Cara had under her own eye, the same one that adorned the badge she’d worn since the day they’d visited Chandrila.

“Well. If I’d still had any lingering doubts about your allegiance, they’d certainly be put to rest now,” Cara said, and Alax let out a slight laugh. “Were you ever gonna tell me about this?”

“I doubt it.”

“Why not?” asked the Alderaanian. She went to run her fingers over it but stopped when she realized that the tattoo and the burn weren’t the only significant markings on Alax’s back. Beneath the ink, all up and down her skin, were ugly scars. They were long and thin, mostly perpendicular to her spine, and looked to be the result of repeated blows from a whip or rod of some sort. Cara grazed a hand across them and felt her tense at the touch.

“That’s why,” Alax said gravely.

“What did this to you?”

The commander shook her head as she fidgeted. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does,” the marshal argued. She realized then that the tattoo almost covered all the scars entirely. Alax had had it placed there deliberately, clearly in an effort to cover part of her old life with the symbol of her new self. All at once Cara understood. “Was it him?”

Alax stared at the floor again, all the confirmation she needed. The more Cara learned about Brendol Hux the more she hoped that once they found him, Alax would let her have a few minutes alone with the man before she finished him off.

Knowing the commander wouldn’t want to talk about it any more, she got to work tending to her wound. But she had to make a vow to her friend before the moment passed entirely.

“We’ll find him, Alax. I promise.”

~

Alax couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so exhausted, either physically or emotionally.

It had started out as any other day of base busting, as Cara had started calling their missions to destroy Imperial outposts. They’d done it half a dozen times in the months since the Alderaanian had joined the crew, and they’d both come to equally enjoy the routine and each other’s company. Or so she thought. But after Cara’s “joke” about using her image as motivation to accurately shoot stormtroopers, she’d begun to question that assumption. Even if it _had_ just been a joke, it seemed there was probably some truth in it.

On the other hand, Cara had been so supportive after she’d been shot, so gentle and attentive with the wound, and so outraged on her behalf once she’d seen the scars. It was all so confusing, trying to figure out where she stood with the marshal who’d hated her for such a long time. Not that it mattered, she tried to remind herself. They had a good professional relationship. They worked well together. That was all it needed to be. That was all it _should_ be.

She only wanted Cara to tolerate her. She didn’t deserve any more than that.

Alax was already in bed, fully prepared to begin a sleepless night pondering it all, when there was a knock at the door to her quarters. She sat up and called for whoever it was to come in, and the door slid open to reveal the Alderaanian, leaning against the frame and looking effortlessly casual.

“Hey. Can I come in?” she asked, even though Alax had just invited her to do so. “I brought a present.”

She stepped inside, holding up a dark glass bottle and a pair of cups. Alax just watched as she plopped herself down on the bunk, poured some of the liquid from the bottle into a cup, and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” the commander asked, bringing the cup to her face for a closer look.

“It’s called alcohol,” Cara said sarcastically as she poured herself a cup. Alax sniffed at her own, immediately regretting the decision.

“Smells awful.”

The marshal chuckled and took a drink. “It’s not about the smell.”

Alax carefully took a sip, then had to fight the urge to spit the stuff straight back into the cup.

“Tastes awful,” she said, continuing to gag over it. Cara sighed.

“It’s not about the taste either.”

“Well what’s it about then?” Alax had never had any experience with alcohol prior to this, and she couldn’t wrap her head around why Cara and so many others enjoyed it.

“How it makes you feel,” the Alderaanian answered. “It’s bad day medicine.”

The commander looked away, then attempted to give the cup back. “I don’t need bad day medicine.”

“Yes, you do,” Cara said, shoving Alax’s arm back gently.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Cara.”

“Alax.” The marshal glared at her, then guided her hand holding the cup back up to her face. “Just drink it. And talk. You’ll feel better in no time. Trust me.”

The glare softened, and dark brown eyes met hers with a warmth Alax had first seen seven years ago but nearly forgotten about in the time since. She did trust Cara, with things far more important than just her choice of drinks. And she did need to talk some things out, even if she didn’t want to. Maybe the foul-smelling liquid would help her want to.

Alax took another sip, trying her hardest not to gag on it again, and actually managed to get over the taste long enough to swallow.

“See? Not so hard.” Cara clanked her own cup off the commander’s and took a long drink. “Now talk to me.”

And so she did. Between the alcohol and Cara’s welcoming eyes, Alax managed to talk through everything they’d been through that day. The Alderaanian again reassured her that the buckethead crack had indeed been a joke, then later reiterated her promise that they would find Brendol Hux and make him pay for what he’d done. The commander was thankful for the tongue-loosening drink as she explained how she’d gotten the scars on her back -- one of the physical components of her father’s conditioning process, one exclusively saved for her out of all the cadets. She didn’t miss the fiery rage that burned in Cara’s eyes as she described his methods to her.

By the time the bottle was empty they’d mercifully moved on to lighter topics, like Cara making fun of her over the _Eclipse_ ’s flamboyant paint job, Cara rubbing in the fact that she was more consistently knocking her down in their sparring sessions, and Cara being shocked to find out she’d never drank before that night.

“Never?!” she exclaimed, only slightly too loudly, and Alax shook her head.

“Never.”

“Well. Part of me is impressed. You’re handling it very well for someone who’s never had it before,” the Alderaanian observed. Alax wasn’t quite sure what that meant. She had noticed a new feeling in her head, as if it were lighter, perhaps made of air. But she hadn’t done or said anything out of character, which she’d heard could be a side effect.

“Thank you?”

“Don’t. The other part of me is deeply disturbed by this,” Cara said, then scoffed. “Never had alcohol, that’s such an Im--”

“Do not say it,” the commander ordered, cutting her off before the inevitable Imperial connection could be made.

“Sorry. But, I mean...come on,” the marshal commented with a shrug. Alax rolled her eyes.

“Yeah yeah. Look, it’s not my fault some of the old programming stuck better than other parts.”

“I guess I shouldn’t complain,” Cara mused, looking at her again with the warm eyes, and suddenly Alax realized they were much closer together on her bed than they’d been at the start of the drinking session. “Good that you lost the parts you did.”

“Yeah. Fewer parts for you to hate.”

“Yeah....” the Alderaanian said slowly, her face growing serious, which Alax found perplexing.

“What?”

Cara shifted awkwardly where she sat, nearly shoulder to shoulder with the commander. After studying her own lap for a moment, she took a breath and looked her in the eye again.

“Okay if this doesn’t come out well I’m going to blame it on the alcohol, but the truth is....I don’t hate you at all Alax,” she confessed. “I _wanted_ to hate you. Everything was easier when I hated you. But I don’t. I can’t. It just...doesn’t work.”

It was Alax’s turn to squirm, breaking away from Cara’s gaze. “That’s a shame.”

“No it’s not,” Cara countered, turning Alax’s face back toward her with a gentle hand. “It’s a lot more fun to like you.”

In one slow but deliberate motion, the Alderaanian closed the small space between them, leaning in at the same time as she brought the face she still held closer to her own. Alax’s breath failed her the moment she felt Cara’s on her face, on her lips. An instant before those lips met hers, she pulled back ever so slightly. 

“What are you doing?” Alax asked, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

“Trying to kiss you,” Cara said, completely still except for the thumb now lightly stroking her jawline. Alax didn’t move either, afraid of making any kind of movement, afraid of everything that was happening but at the same time afraid it would stop.

“You sh...you shouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Cara rested her forehead against hers, and Alax felt tears spring to her eyes. None of this made sense. How could Cara want this? After everything she’d done, everything she’d put her through? This wasn’t part of the deal they’d made. Alax had done nothing to earn this affection. In a hundred lifetimes she could never have made up for what she’d been. Especially not enough for this to happen.

“Because I don’t...deserve it.”

Cara let out a slight chuckle. “It’s a kiss, it’s not a Medal of Bravery.”

“Doesn’t matter, I don’t--“

“Alax. It’s okay,” she said, pulling back to look into her eyes. “I forgive you. You hear me? I forgive you.”

The former Imperial spy stared at her for a moment, taking in the sincerity in the brown eyes before her as her own began to leak. She shook her head.

“I don’t deserve that either,” Alax said, her voice cracking as the tears started to flow down her face.

“It’s not up to you,” Cara said. With the hand still holding her face, she wiped away a tear, then leaned in again.

This time Alax didn’t pull away as the other woman’s lips captured hers. They were warm, and soft, and for a moment they were the only thing that existed in the galaxy. She still knew, deep down, that she didn’t deserve the feeling it gave her. But as Cara kissed her, nothing she knew seemed to matter anymore.

She didn’t know how long it went on, but eventually the Alderaanian pulled back to look at her again, the guiding hand still holding her face.

“Do you want me to go?” Cara asked softly.

Once again Alax was stuck, afraid to move or say anything one way or the other. She knew whatever happened now, nothing would be the same. And she was terrified of whatever it was that would happen next. But somehow she felt that just for that night, as long as Cara was holding on to her, everything would be okay. As scared as she was, she’d never felt safer in her entire life.

“No,” Alax said, reaching up to cover Cara’s hand with her own. “No, I don’t want you to go.”

“Okay.”

So she didn’t go. Instead she wrapped her strong arms around Alax, who was surprised to feel herself melt into her. And they laid there, silently, safely, until they each fell sound asleep.


	6. The Wave

Cara tried her hardest not to wake up when she felt Alax begin to stir in her grasp. She wasn’t ready to get up and face the consequences of the decisions she’d made the night before, wasn’t ready to find out what the commander was feeling about all of it. She wanted to lay there in blissful ignorance of that for just a little longer.

The Alderaanian had no regrets. The alcohol hadn’t factored in much at all -- she’d known exactly what she was doing, even though she’d surprised herself in doing it at that moment. She’d meant to wait, to give Alax a little more time to possibly come to her own realizations first, but Cara knew that was unlikely to happen without a little push. She just hoped she hadn’t pushed too far too fast.

And if the commander’s failing attempts to wiggle out of her arms and leave without waking her were any indication, she may have done just that.

Cara would have loved to stay there for a while pretending to still be asleep while Alax remained trapped between her strong arms, but she had to admit that that would be cruel of her. Instead she slowly opened her eyes and released her hold on the squirming redhead. Alax seemed to freeze then, a terrified look crossing her face that said she was no more ready to have this conversation than Cara was.

“Hey,” the marshal said softly, carefully, so as not to startle her further. “Are you....okay...?”

The commander didn’t respond, only stared at her with her mouth hanging open as if trying to will some words to come out of it but unable to make her brain form any.

“Alax, you have to say something,” Cara urged her, growing more nervous by the second. “Please.”

Alax opened and closed her mouth for another moment before finally settling on something to say.

“I didn’t....expect that,” she said, and Cara couldn’t fight a chuckle in spite of herself.

“Yes, that’s awfully clear.”

The former spy just shook her head, still at a loss for a full sentence. “I don’t--I...why did you...?”

“I told you. I like you,” Cara said with a smile, placing her hand on the other woman’s arm in an attempt to calm her down. “That’s what people do when they like you. I know you’re unfamiliar with the concept, but you’ll catch up.”

“But--” Alax didn’t seem to recognize her joke, so Cara cut her off.

“I also told you I forgive you. And if I know you at all, that’s the part you’re really stuck on,” she continued. She didn’t even need to see Alax’s nodded confirmation. It was perfectly clear. Cara could have forgiven her a thousand times over, but Alax would never forgive herself for what she’d been. And as long as that was the case, she’d never believe she deserved to feel anything good.

“How can you?” the commander asked sincerely. “Cara, I...I lied to you. Betrayed you. I was on the side that...took your home from you.”

“I know all that, Alax. Why do you think it’s taken so long?” Cara said sadly, for a moment wondering how their lives would have been different if Alax had been who she’d said she was all along, if she’d never been an Imp. If anything had become clear to her over the last months, it was that Alax would never have done those things, would never have been part of the Empire, if not for who her father was. “But now that I see you...not what they made you, but the real you? I don’t think you were ever one of them at heart.”

Cara reached up to stroke her jawline, as she had the night before, and Alax’s eyes closed slowly at the tender touch. To her surprise, when they opened again they were no longer scared and confused, but curious.

“So what happens now?” she asked with a hint of a smile, and Cara felt her own creep across her face.

“Well, right now I’m going to take a minute to appreciate that your perfect hair is finally a mess,” she said, reaching to further ruffle the dark red hair that she was used to seeing all neat and combed. Alax whined adorably and did her best to stay out of reach while Cara laughed. “But after that...I don’t really know either.”

She hadn’t thought much about what would happen next, hadn’t expected the commander to even consider asking. But it didn’t seem like it would matter, because the longer they laid there staring at each other, the more nervous Alax’s eyes grew again.

“Cara, I....”

“You’re not ready, are you?” the marshal guessed, and Alax could only look down in silent confirmation. She may have been curious, may have wanted to give in to whatever was happening, but she probably still didn’t think she was worthy of it. She’d have to work out her feelings on her own. Cara lifted her chin so their eyes could meet. “It’s okay. Really. I can be patient.”

Alax smirked. “That would be a first,” she said, and Cara rolled her eyes.

“Don’t make me change my mind, Vanda.”

She leaned in and kissed her on the forehead, just as she’d first done seven years ago, then got up from the bunk and left the commander’s quarters.

~

It was the disruption of her routine -- not anything else, Alax tried to convince herself -- that was to blame for her lack of focus the morning after she’d fallen asleep in Cara’s arms.

Of course that’s what it was. She’d slept too late, then been held up by their conversation, then continued to stay in bed staring up at the top of the bunk they’d shared long after the Alderaanian had left, putting her way behind schedule. By the time she’d gotten up, she’d long since missed her usual appointment with the empty training room, and therefore her daily workout had been complicated by having to share the cramped space. And she’d only had time for a cup of caf, rather than a real breakfast, before needing to report to the command bridge.

Yes, it was all that which was the problem. Not the swirling emotions and thoughts all vying for attention in her mind.

Alax had a ship to command, after all. She had a job to do, Imps to find. She didn’t have time to lay around and wonder what was the worst that could happen if she accepted whatever was going on between Cara and herself. She didn’t have time to stand there and think about how it was even possible that the Alderaanian had forgiven her already. She definitely didn’t have time to forget everything else she was doing and get lost in the memory of how it had felt when Cara kissed her.

And of course that _wasn’t_ what was happening when she noticed the young officers shooting glances in her direction at the holotable from where they sat studying various transmission readouts. She caught one of them in the act, a human named Lieutenant Maden, as the young woman averted her eyes.

“Something on your mind, Lieutenant?” Alax asked.

“No, sir,” Maden replied, perhaps a little too quickly.

“Sure about that?” the commander pressed, a curious eyebrow raised. The young lieutenant looked to the Mirialan officer next to her as if unsure of herself, then stammered her reply.

“It’s just, I...I saw Marshal Dune leaving your quarters this morning,” she said, and Alax felt her face grow red. Luckily the command bridge was dark enough that the others wouldn’t see. “I was worried she may have been...trying to sabotage you.”

Alax let out a short sigh of relief. “Oh. No, it’s nothing like that, Lieutenant.”

“Oh. Well....congratulations, sir,” Maden said, glancing again at her counterpart. It took a moment for the meaning of the comment to sink in with the commander, at which point she had to fight the urge to cover her face with her hands in embarrassment.

“Let’s just...focus on the task at hand, shall we?” she suggested instead, hoping to put it to rest.

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant agreed. The two young officers seemed to get back to their work, but moments later Alax noticed their hands meeting -- unmistakably the exchange of credits from one to the other.

The commander shook her head at herself for having fallen for their trick, playing into their bet. She had to wonder then how long ago that bet had been made, how long the crew had been gambling on whether or not there was something going on between their commander and the marshal. Had it just been since that morning? Or since Cara had come aboard the _Eclipse_? Something told her it was closer to the latter option, but what had given them that idea she didn’t know. Aside from the fact that she and Cara spent so much time together and worked together so well and understood each other better than anyone on the ship and...

_Okay, so maybe there were signs_. But why had those signs been so obvious to the crew, while Alax had been totally blindsided by Cara’s advances? Probably because she was in complete denial, she had to admit. From the moment they’d been reunited, she’d been working hard to ignore the warm feeling in her chest every time Cara looked at her, and the way her heart fluttered when she smiled. Because she didn’t deserve to feel those things, had no right to the happiness that came with being back in the former shock trooper’s presence.

And yet...Cara had forgiven her, even though Alax knew she hadn’t earned it. _It’s not up to you_ , she’d said just before she changed everything, and she was right. Cara’s forgiveness wasn’t anyone’s to decide but hers. It certainly wasn’t something Alax was in any position to negotiate. She could only argue internally over whether or not to forgive herself. And she supposed, if the one person she’d hurt the most could forgive her, why couldn’t she do the same? If Cara believed she was deserving of her affection, why shouldn’t Alax accept it?

Maybe it was time she accepted it.

“Would you excuse me,” Alax said absentmindedly, leaving the command bridge without waiting for a response. She was getting nothing done there anyway. The commander turned her brain off for the trek to the training room, knowing that if she thought any more about what she was about to do, she wouldn’t be able to follow through on it.

She was riding a wave of determined recklessness, and she needed it to carry her just a little farther.

As expected, Cara was there in the training room, sweaty and breathing heavily from whatever workout she’d been in the middle of. Upon seeing the commander burst into the room she grinned, the way she always did when Alax was about to suggest a sparring session.

“Hey. You sure you wanna go--“

But Alax wasn’t interested in sparring. She walked right up and cut off Cara’s inevitable taunt, taking her face in her hands and kissing her confidently. The marshal was frozen for a moment, apparently shocked by the turn of events, but eventually she returned the favor. After several of the most exhilarating seconds of her life, Alax broke away and looked her in the eye.

“I don’t know how any of this works,” she confessed. “I just know I don’t want to make you wait.”

She kissed her once more for good measure, and again Cara seemed pleasantly flustered by the action.

“Well you...you certainly don’t need any lessons in how _that_ works,” the Alderaanian observed breathlessly.

“No?” asked Alax, smirking at how quickly she’d managed to rattle the usually calm, cool marshal. But almost as quickly, Cara recovered. She grinned back at her slyly, gave a nonchalant shrug, then pulled her closer by the front of her wrinkle-free uniform.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t practice.”

“That sounds good,” the commander agreed with a laugh, and Cara got in a bit of practice then and there before looking seriously at her.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked.

“No. I’m not,” Alax admitted, smiling and tucking Cara’s hair behind her ear gently. “But I trust you.”

The Alderaanian matched her smile. “I can work with that.”

~

The thing Cara was most surprised by in the first few weeks after she and Alax got together was how little actually changed.

She hadn’t realized how often the two of them had already been flirting with each other until they started doing it for real, hadn’t recognized how much time they’d already spent together until it became painful to be apart. Luckily they rarely had to be apart. The job went on as it always had, traveling through space patrolling the New Republic’s jurisdiction, gathering any information they could on where to find more Imperial remnants. All that had really changed was how much time Cara now spent in the commander’s quarters after the long days of work, which was turning out to be a lot.

That was where they were when the call came.

Alax seemed to be half asleep, worn out more from their after-work activity than the actual job itself, but Cara was feeling talkative.

“You know what I find cute?” she asked out of the blue from where she laid half on top of Alax, letting her hand glide over the commander’s toned left arm.

“Oh, I can’t wait to find out,” Alax replied with a chuckle.

The Alderaanian stopped her hand at the other woman’s wrist, grabbed it, and brought it to her face. “This.”

Alax raised an eyebrow at the up-close look at the device on her wrist. “My comm?”

“Mmhm.”

“What is cute about my comm?”

“That you wear it like this all the time now,” Cara said. She let Alax’s arm rest on her torso but continued to play with the wrist comm, tracing the outline of it with her finger. “Always in reach.”

“I did learn my lesson, yes,” the commander said. Cara hadn’t failed to notice that ever since she’d lost her leg -- to which she’d always attached her handheld comms before -- she’d had a deeper appreciation for the device and kept it in the most convenient spot possible at all times. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, it never left her wrist. “Failing to see what’s cute about that, however...”

Cara sighed. “Maybe I’m just in a mood where I find everything about you cute, okay?”

“Ah. That does make more sense,” Alax conceded with a grin, watching as the Alderaanian fiddled with the buttons on the comm. “Just be careful with it or you’re gonna end up broadcasting us to the whole crew--”

“Commander Vanda?” a voice said from the device, and Alax’s eyes widened in fright.

“ _What did you do?!_ ” she whisper-yelled at the marshal.

“ _I didn’t touch it!_ ”

“Commander?” the voice returned.

Alax cleared her throat and pressed a button to respond. “Yes, Captain?”

“Urgent transmission coming through for you, sir,” Captain Payne reported, presumably from his post in the cockpit.

“From whom?”

“Wouldn’t say, sir.”

The commander’s face scrunched in confusion. “Patch it through to the table in the command bridge, I’ll take it in there.”

She frowned as they got up and put on appropriate clothing for walking through the ship, and Cara, still feeling talkative, expressed her curiosity.

“Who could be calling that doesn’t want to say who they are?”

“I have no idea,” Alax admitted as she tugged on her boots. Suddenly she froze and looked up at Cara.

“What?”

“What if it’s someone who knows where my father is?” After the incident with Jafen Thiff a few weeks prior, Alax had begun to discreetly run searches and put out feelers for more of Brendol’s top cadets from back in the day. She hadn’t even been sure any of them were still alive, but they’d agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to try.

“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” Cara suggested, as much to herself as to the commander.

They rushed to the bridge, where Alax called up the holo-transmission line as the marshal hung back near the door. A whitish-blue figure appeared in the middle of the table, a tired-looking man with his hands on his hips.

Not one of the Commandant’s Cadets. But someone they both knew.

“Magistrate Karga?” Alax’s voice held as much surprise as Cara felt.

“Commander,” Greef replied politely. “Is Marshal Dune with you?”

“Of course, she’s--” the commander began to say, but Cara was already at her side.

“What’s wrong, Greef?”

“Someone else needs to speak with you,” the magistrate replied, glancing at Alax as if to suggest that whoever it was would likely not want to talk in front of the New Republic officer.

“It’s okay,” Cara assured him. “We can trust her.”

Karga hesitated for a moment, but eventually nodded at someone out of view, then stepped aside. His image was replaced by that of an armor-clad man she knew all too well.

“Mando?”

“Cara. I need your help,” the Mandalorian said. “They have the kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not really a chapter note but I just want to state one more time for the record that my continued love of Cara Dune is in no way, shape, or form an endorsement of G*na C*rano or her politics. Positive Cara would not approve either.


	7. Not By Yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hella rewriting the events of season 2 over these next couple chapters so I hope y'all weren't super attached to those...

Alax had of course been under no illusions that she knew everything there was to know about Cara, but the moment the Mandalorian showed up on her holotable, she realized she had much more to learn than she’d ever expected in the first place.

She watched with rapt curiosity as the marshal’s face flashed with anger, before her expression grew focused and concerned. Alax was at a loss as to what was going on, but Cara seemed to know exactly what was happening.

_They have the kid_ , the man had said, and with those words no less than a dozen questions immediately popped into the commander’s mind. _What kid? Whose kid? Who has the kid? Cara knows a kid?_ But perhaps the biggest question was, why had those four little words triggered such an immediate and strong response in Cara?

Her questions were going to have to wait, however, because the Alderaanian was asking her own of the Mandalorian.

“You’re still on Nevarro?”

“Yes. But I need to get moving.”

“Give me a day. You got anybody else you can ask for help? Greef?”

“Says he has to stay, but I’ve got some others to reach out to.”

“Good. I’m on my way,” Cara said, then she and the Mandalorian nodded at each other and just like that the call was done. She turned and headed quickly for the door of the command bridge, and Alax, startled by the sudden movement, had to jog to catch up to her.

“Woah, woah, woah,” the commander said, finally putting herself between Cara and wherever it was the marshal was headed. “Care to tell me what’s going on here?”

“I have to go,” Cara said, attempting to push her way past. “Moff Gideon has the kid.”

Alax was so occupied with trying to stop her from getting by that the shiver that ran up her spine at the man’s name almost didn’t register. Almost.

“Moff Gideon?” she repeated, hoping she hadn’t heard correctly.

“I know, I thought he’d been executed too,” said Cara, apparently misinterpreting Alax’s surprise.

“No, I knew that was a lie,” she said, and it was the marshal’s turn to look surprised. “But, _that’s_ who you’ve had run-ins with before?”

Obviously Alax already knew about Cara’s involvement in taking down an Imperial lab on Nevarro, and the Alderaanian had mentioned a prior skirmish with more Imps there in passing. But Gideon’s name had never come up before. She would have remembered that. She would have insisted on going after a monster like him as soon as possible.

“Yeah okay, I probably should have mentioned that before and I’ll tell you why I didn’t but I don’t have time right now,” Cara said all in one breath while doing her best to slip past. “Can you tell the guys in the hangar to let me borrow the U-wing?”

The commander laughed to herself as she shook her head. Even after months of working with a partner, Cara hadn’t quite been able to shed her lone warrior persona. She still felt like she had to run back to the fight all on her own, apparently. Especially where Nevarro and the Mandalorian and everything that came with them were concerned.

“You’re not taking the U-wing, Cara,” Alax said, then held up a hand when she began to object. “We’re turning this whole ship around.”

Before Cara had a chance to question her decision, she tapped a button on her wrist comm and informed Captain Payne that they were in for a change of destination. He copied and moments later they felt the unmistakable lurch of the ship jumping to lightspeed. Once they were safely in hyperspace the two of them returned to the commander’s quarters, where Alax took a seat on her bed but Cara began to pace anxiously.

“Alax, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “This isn’t part of your fight.”

“The hell it’s not. You don’t think Gideon’s on my list?” asked the commander rhetorically. There wasn’t really a list. But if there was, Gideon’s name would have just moved up to right beneath her father’s. She reached out and grabbed the pacing Alderaanian’s hand gently, stopping her mid-stride. “Besides, I told you I’d be right there with you when you had to do something the New Republic wouldn’t like.”

Cara finally looked at her, the worried expression giving way to a smirk once she saw the mischievous half-smile on Alax’s face.

“You’re not just saying nice things because you need to ask me a lot of questions now, right?” she asked.

“Oh no, the two are completely unrelated. Well, mostly.”

“Right,” the Alderaanian said with a roll of her eyes. “Better get on with it, then.”

Sighing heavily, she sat on the bed and leaned against the wall beside the commander. Alax didn’t know where to start, so she figured she might as well get her most awkward question out of the way right off the top.

“It’s not, like.... _your_ kid, right?” she guessed, cringing slightly. Cara just looked at her with a perfectly straight face.

“Why? Would that complicate our relationship?” asked the marshal. Alax balked, mouth hanging open wordlessly for a moment of sheer disbelief and panic before Cara mercifully laughed at her. “No, it’s not my kid. He’s not even human.”

“Mandalorians are humans,” Alax pointed out, but Cara shook her head.

“Yeah but the kid’s a foundling,” she said, and the commander tilted her head in confusion. “Like, adopted?”

“Oh. So...the Mandalorian...found him and adopted him?”

“I don’t think it’s as official as all that, but pretty much.”

Rather than continuing to let Alax uncover the story one awkward question at a time, Cara explained that her Mandalorian friend had been hired by an Imperial client to retrieve a high-profile bounty, only to discover that it was this child. He’d learned quickly that the kid had extraordinary powers, after it saved his life, and upon collecting his payment for bringing it back had a change of heart. Worried that the Imperial remnant was subjecting the child to harmful experiments, he snuck back into their base and took him. The two had been trying to hide from bounty hunters and Imps ever since. She had met them on Sorgan, and later helped defend them against Gideon and his men on Nevarro, where they’d assumed the moff had died when Mando took out his TIE fighter. Only recently they’d realized they were wrong.

“I thought it was going okay,” Cara said sadly. “They were just trying to get the kid back to his own kind, but then we found out Gideon was still alive when we busted that base on Nevarro....I guess it was only a matter of time after that.” She paused as a mixture of anger and regret filled her eyes. “I should have been with them. I should have been there.”

“Hey. No,” Alax said, placing what she hoped was a comforting hand on her knee. “You couldn’t have known. And I know this is going to be news to you, but you can’t protect everyone. Not by yourself.”

Cara gave a tight-lipped smile and joined her hand with the one on her knee. “Yeah. I’m learning that.”

They sat silently for a moment, holding hands and looking affectionately into each other’s eyes, before Alax began to shake her head wistfully.

“What’s the matter?” asked the marshal.

“Nothing, it’s just...hard for me to fathom,” Alax said quietly. “This guy was hired to bring a kid in on a bounty and now he’s more of a father to him than my actual father has ever been to me. Not in a million years could I picture Brendol gathering people for a fight to get me out of trouble.”

She finished with a half-hearted chuckle, trying to mask her pain with humor, but Cara saw right through it. The Alderaanian tugged on the hand she was holding, pulling her in to hold her close. Alax felt her eyes water as Cara engulfed her in her strong arms and spoke softly into her ear.

“Fuck Brendol Hux,” she said. “I’ll fight them all for you myself.”

The commander chuckled for real this time. “What did we _just_ say about you not trying to protect everyone by yourself?”

“Not everyone. Just you.”

Alax lifted her head to look into Cara’s deep brown eyes, eyes that promised just what she was saying. She didn’t need her to, didn’t want her to, but she knew she wouldn’t get a say in the matter. Cara would protect her, fight for her, with everything she had. That was a first. And upon realizing it, Alax wasn’t sure which of her instincts was stronger -- the one telling her to run far away or the one saying to kiss her forever. Luckily she didn’t have time to decide, as the Alderaanian took it upon herself to connect them in a passionate kiss, then even more passionate actions.

When it was done, Alax was exhausted enough to fall asleep then and there. But her tired mind had one last thing to confess before she could.

“I’m glad you don’t have a kid,” she mumbled into the other woman’s chest.

“You and me both,” Cara agreed, then Alax fell asleep to the sweet sound of her laughter.

~

Cara could swear she’d only just gotten to sleep when the proximity alert sounded in the commander’s quarters, informing them that they were nearing Nevarro. Alax had fallen asleep quickly, but the marshal had spent all night agonizing over what was about to happen. Normally she didn’t lose any sleep over an impending date with the Imps, but this was different. There was so much on the line this time.

It wasn’t just her life on the line, as it had been for so many years after the war. And it wasn’t just Mando’s life and the kid’s, though that would have been enough to motivate her. No, now Alax’s life was on the line too, along with everything they’d worked for. If they failed against Gideon, everything they’d done to slow the spread of the Empire back across the Outer Rim would be for nothing. The Imps would rebuild it all in no time with no one working to resist them. They couldn’t fail. The plan had to be perfect, and even with a perfect plan they’d likely have to get pretty lucky to all make it out alive.

A small part of her felt like running, taking off with Alax and finding a nice quiet world where they could just forget about all of it and be together. After all this time and everything they’d been through, they had every right to do that. Didn’t they? They’d already done so much more than anyone else. They owed the galaxy nothing at this point.

But of course those thoughts had been short-lived. There was no way she was about to leave Mando hanging when he needed her, and she knew Alax felt the same even though she’d only learned of the man’s existence a matter of hours ago. They were a team now. All her fights were Alax’s, and Alax’s fights were hers.

If that hadn’t already been clear, it would have been the moment she opened her eyes. The commander was already up, dressed and ready and watching her with a cup of caf in each hand. She took a sip from one and offered Cara the other.

“Let’s go get that kid back, shall we?”

By the time they joined up with Mando and his new friends on Nevarro, Cara was feeling much more confident about the whole thing. She was a little less confident that she’d remember all the names of the three new Mandalorians and the assassin that would make up the rest of the strike team, but ultimately that didn’t matter. They were all on board, all ready to ruin Moff Gideon’s day and bring the kid back.

Granted, most of them had been less than thrilled to see the big, gaudy New Republic frigate and the clean-cut officer in command of it, but Cara assured Mando that Alax was there to help -- not make arrests -- and eventually they all relaxed enough to listen to her.

“This won’t be easy,” Alax said with her usual commanderly authority once they’d gathered in Karga’s office to discuss their strategy. “There’s a reason I haven’t tried to go after Gideon myself yet.”

“And that is?” asked one of the new Mandalorians, Bo-something, who seemed to have her own bone to pick with Gideon.

“That is because he’s not as stupid as the rest of these guys the Imps have had running things out here,” the commander explained. “You don’t come up through the ISB without learning what all the Empire’s weaknesses were and how to avoid them. He won’t make the same mistakes the others have.”

Cara held her breath and watched for reactions to Alax’s insider knowledge about the Empire and its supporters, hoping they wouldn’t have to go through proving her loyalty yet again, but no one seemed too interested in it.

“It won’t matter what mistakes he makes if we don’t figure out where he is,” added another Mandalorian, Boba. “How do we locate him?”

“I’ve got a man inside an Imp base on Morak,” Alax offered. “He owes me. He can get us the coordinates for the cruiser, but infiltration will be a bit more complicated. Going in blind against a guy like Gideon isn’t a strategy I’d suggest.”

They all chewed on that for a moment, pondering how they could possibly get onto the cruiser, locate the child, capture Gideon, and get back without getting themselves killed in the process. Using any of the New Republic personnel or ships was out of the question. Even Alax would get shut down if her superiors found out she’d gone after the moff with all that before getting their approval. This would have to be a small operation. But how...?

“Could your source locate a single person?” Mando eventually spoke up, questioning the commander.

“Depends,” the redhead responded. “Who’re we talking about?”

“One of their scientists. A Doctor Pershing.”

Cara’s ears perked up. “From the recording at the lab?”

“Yes. If he’s not already on the cruiser, maybe we can lure him out, lean on him for information about Gideon’s defenses.”

The commander nodded distantly, a clear sign to Cara that her mind was already thinking three steps ahead. “Worth a shot. I’ll be back.”

Alax took off for the _Eclipse_ , leaving a lingering touch on Cara’s arm as she passed. Mando seemed to take note of the moment and shot her a look through the tinted helmet as the rest of the new team dispersed to get ready for whatever was to happen next.

“Seems we have a lot to catch up on,” he said once they were alone.

Cara snorted. “You’re tellin’ me."

“You first,” he suggested, and although she thought his update was far more important, she decided it was best to indulge him. In all likelihood, he only wanted to hear her story as a way to distract himself anyway.

“Yeah, that was, uh....an unexpected development,” she admitted with a wry smile. “Thought I was just gonna be helping her clean up the Outer Rim for a while, but then...”

She shrugged, unsure of how to put into words what had happened between her and Alax. Especially in a way that wouldn’t change how Mando saw her. She didn’t need him thinking she’d gone completely soft.

But he just nodded in understanding before moving on. “How’s she know so much about the Empire?”

“Nothin’ gets past you, does it?” Cara said, then chewed on the inside of her cheek as she came to the decision to let him in on Alax’s secret. “Look, don’t tell the others, but...she was one of them. Years ago, during the war.”

“And yet you two...?”

“I know, how out of character, right? The Alderaanian and the Imp?” She shook her head, realizing how crazy it must seem. “But she wasn’t one of them by choice. It was all just....programming.”

The first time Alax had used that word to describe her upbringing, Cara had had to stop herself from laughing. But now she knew there was no other word for it. And she felt awful for ever having doubted her.

“You don’t have to explain,” said the Mandalorian. “As long as you trust her, so do I.”

“Yeah well, you _do_ have to explain,” she countered, looking at him as tenderly as she could manage. “What happened, Mando?”

Even without seeing his face, she could tell he was a mess without the kid. He’d had a hard enough time leaving the little womp rat in the school for a day when they’d gone off to destroy the Nevarro base, and that was when the kid was perfectly safe. He must have been going through hell now, wondering what was happening to the child now that he was in Gideon’s clutches. She felt her heart breaking for him.

After a long moment of painful silence he shook his helmeted head and spoke softly.

“I lost focus,” he admitted. “Gideon blew up the _Razor Crest_ and for a minute I just...forgot about protecting him. That was all it took.”

It was then that Cara noticed he’d been fidgeting with an object, a little silver ball that he now gripped tightly in his hand.

“We’re gonna make him pay, you know,” she promised. “Gideon’s not gonna know what hit him.”

“I don’t care about that. I don’t care about Gideon or the Empire or anything else,” Mando insisted, though his voice stayed just as level as always. “I just need to get him back. I just need...Grogu...back.”

“Grogu?” Cara repeated.

“That’s his name. He’s had a name all this time,” said Mando with the slightest hint of an ironic laugh. “We met a Jedi and she spoke to him through the Force. He...told her his name.”

The Mandalorian stared down at the ball in his gloved hand. Cara didn’t know what it was, but clearly the thing was a point of connection for them. And now that the _Crest_ was gone, it was likely the only such thing he had left.

They couldn’t fail him. _She_ couldn’t fail him.

Cara reached out tentatively and placed a friendly, reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“We’re gonna get him back, buddy. I promise.”


	8. Rescue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features a fun combination of me stealing exact dialogue and action mixed with me deliberately ignoring very big parts of the episode. Not sorry.

The plan had to be put together and into motion quickly once Alax’s source on Morak came through with the information they needed. He’d located Pershing on Kamino, but the doctor was scheduled to depart for Gideon’s cruiser within that same day. The only chance they had of using what he knew was to intercept him on the way there.

The commander stood with her brow furrowed and hands on her hips while she and the rest of the team stood around the holo-projector on Boba Fett’s unfortunately named gunship. They’d settled on taking _Slave I_ to do the intercept, as it was just large enough to hold them all but was outfitted with a number of unique features that Alax thought could be useful for the job.

“Okay. So we disable the lambda shuttle with the ion cannons...” she recapped, referring to the ship Pershing was being transported on and their plan for getting onto it, “then lock on and board. Lambdas only hold a small crew -- probably just a pilot and co-pilot for a transport like this -- so we won’t need too big of a boarding party this time around. You know this Pershing fellow?”

Alax eyed the Mandalorian questioningly, and he gave a nod. “He’ll recognize me.”

“Good. You, Cara, and I will go in. You secure the doctor, we’ll handle any resistance from the crew,” she said, in full commander mode. “The ion cannon will knock out their comms, right?”

Fett nodded. “They’ll be sitting mynocks long enough for you to get in.”

“Alright then. Once we’ve got our man, we’ll figure out the next steps from there.”

Normally at the end of a briefing, the crew would scatter to prepare, but the cramped quarters of the ship made that difficult. Fett and his assassin companion Fennec climbed to the cockpit, but the rest of them didn’t have many options for seating beyond the main hold. That wouldn’t bode well for Alax. After years of pulling off missions like this all the time, she knew herself. She knew she needed some space, some time alone, before it all started. Cara knew that by now as well, so the commander was only slightly startled when the marshal grabbed her by the arm and guided her to what must have been the cargo hold. She went to leave again but Alax held on.

“No, stay,” she pleaded. “I don’t need space from everybody.”

“You sure?” Cara asked, and took a seat on the cargo crate next to her once Alax nodded her approval. They joined hands and sat quietly for a while before the marshal spoke up again. “How many of these are we gonna have to do before this part gets easier, you think?”

Alax chuckled lightly. She’d never really spoken to Cara about her quiet time before a mission, but the Alderaanian understood the ritual nevertheless. It was all a matter of getting in the right mindset, of focusing on the mission and reminding herself of why they were doing what they were doing. It was about letting go of the fear, and preparing for both the possibility of getting killed and the certainty of doing some more killing.

“All of them. Hopefully,” she answered. She couldn’t allow it to get easier. It had all been easy when she’d been an Imp. It had been the easiest thing she knew, instinctual even. The programming had made sure of that. “If it gets easier....that’s when I know I have to quit.”

Cara shook her head then squeezed the hand she was holding.

“You know, you are allowed to forgive yourself before we get all the Imps rounded up,” she said. “I’m giving you permission.”

“I know,” Alax said with a sigh. “I’m trying.”

“Promise?” asked the Alderaanian, resting her head on the commander’s shoulder.

“Promise.”

She really was trying, contrary to her own instincts, because she knew she couldn’t continue to be with Cara while still believing she was undeserving of her. Especially considering Cara didn’t agree with that assessment. Alax had always thought that just maybe she’d be able to forgive herself, to finally clear her conscience, once the Empire was completely gone. But that could take forever. And Cara was not patient enough for that.

So she was trying.

They sat there quietly until Fett announced that he was on the lambda shuttle’s tail, at which point they rejoined the others in the seating area to strap in for the ensuing chase. Five minutes later, _Slave I_ was locked onto the shuttle and the two of them, along with Mando, were boarding the Imperial ship.

The Mandalorian entered first, blaster drawn as he reached the cockpit, where he found a terrified man in spectacles and a pair of Imp pilots. All three leapt from their seats and raised their hands in surrender upon seeing him.

The main pilot spoke up first, placing himself behind the scientist with his hands on the man’s shoulders. “Before you make a mistake, this is Dr. Pershing.”

“We’ve met,” Mando told him, then addressed the doctor. “Is the kid alive?”

“Yes. He’s on the cruiser,” Pershing replied, but any more information he was about to offer up went unsaid, as out of nowhere the pilot grabbed him and held a blaster to his temple. Cara and Alax darted inside the cockpit with their own blasters drawn, one on each Imp.

“Stay back, dropper,” warned the hostage-taker, on whom Cara’s gun was trained.

The co-pilot, sensing an escalating situation he wanted no part of, spoke up with his hands still raised. “Easy, pal. Okay? I’m not with him. We can work something out--”

In a flash, the pilot turned his blaster away from Pershing and shot the man in the back, denying him the chance to work anything out after all.

“Drop your weapon,” Cara demanded calmly, quietly. But the cornered pilot wasn’t about to take orders from her.

“No. No, you listen to me. This is a top-tier target of the New Republic. This is a clone engineer. And if they find out that he’s dead, because of you...you’re gonna wish you never left Alderaan.” The man laughed dryly as he gestured to the tattoo on Cara’s face, and Alax felt her blood turn hot with rage. “I saw the tear. You wanna know what else I saw? I saw your planet destroyed. I was on the Death Star.”

“Which one?” Cara asked, her voice sounding alarmingly pained to Alax’s ears.

The pilot let out another mocking laugh, continuing to shield himself with Pershing’s body. “You think you’re funny? Do you know how many millions were killed on those bases?”

“Drop your blaster,” Cara said through gritted teeth.

“As the galaxy cheered?”

“Last chance,” she warned softly, but the man wouldn’t stop.

“Destroying your planet...was a small price to pay to rid the galaxy of terrorism--”

Blaster fire rang out again and the mouthy pilot dropped to the floor dead as the doctor cried out in pain, clutching the side of his head. Alax and Mando could only watch in silence as the Alderaanian calmly slipped past them and out of the cockpit, the commander absentmindedly rubbing the scar on her own shoulder. They shared a glance, then a shrug, then each took one of Pershing’s arms to escort him out.

The Mandalorian began to try to question the doctor as soon as they got him onto _Slave I_ , but the terrified man was too busy whining about his newly scorched ear to be cooperative. So Alax left the job of patching him up to the Mandalorians and went off in search of Cara. She found her back in the cargo hold, seated again on a crate and staring at the floor. The commander approached quietly to check on the clearly rattled Alderaanian.

“Hey. You alright?” she asked stupidly. Obviously Cara wasn’t alright, despite her nodded response.

“I’m sorry,” the marshal said, to Alax’s surprise.

“What for?”

“Losing it like that,” Cara said, shaking her head in shame. “We could have used him, he might have known--”

“No,” Alax cut her off. “No. If you hadn’t shot him, I would have, okay? We’ve got no use for people like him, I don’t care what information he might have had. He got what was coming to him.” She paused and stared at Cara until she looked up, then put on a grin. “You did make Pershing piss his pants though, so....gonna have to deal with that.”

A grin crept across the marshal’s face as well. “He was screaming like I shot his ear off.”

“Oh you absolutely did that too, but we’re all far less concerned about that part,” said Alax, her smile growing as it became clear that Cara would be okay in spite of the previous confrontation. “I’m once again impressed by your aim, Marshal Dune.”

“Still not gonna tell you my secret, Vanda. Don’t even ask.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Back in higher spirits, they rejoined the rest of the crew and soon they were all studying a projection of Gideon’s cruiser, which Pershing had provided. He sat nearby with his hands bound and a bandage over what was left of his ear as Alax began to assess what they’d be up against.

“A light cruiser like this has the capacity for a crew of several hundred,” she said. “At least, it would have a decade ago. Safe to say Gideon now operates with a fraction of that.”

“Your assessment is misleading.”

All eyes turned to look at the clone engineer.

“Oh, great,” quipped Cara, taking a break from the habitual polishing of her knife. “An objective opinion.”

“This isn’t subterfuge, I assure you,” Pershing replied.

The commander held up a hand to her, suggesting they should hear him out.

“There’s a garrison of dark troopers on board,” the doctor went on. “They’re the ones who abducted the child.”

“How many troopers do they have armed in those suits?” asked Mando.

Pershing waited a beat before answering. “These are third-generation design.”

Alax cursed out loud.

“What?” asked Bo-Katan. “What’s that mean?”

“They aren’t suits anymore,” said the former Imperial officer. “The human inside was...the final weakness to be solved. They’re droids.”

On one hand, it made things morally easier -- fewer people they’d have to kill on the way to their goal. But on the other hand, infiltration just got much more complicated. Alax had been aware of the dark trooper experiments in her days with the Empire, and she knew just how tough they were designed to be. Stormtrooper armor was highly vulnerable to blaster fire, but not these deadly machines. They would have to get creative to dispose of them. _If_ they came across them, that is.

“Where do they deploy from?” asked Fennec, clearly thinking along the same line as Alax.

Pershing stood up and adjusted the projection to zoom in on a section of the cruiser. “They’re held in cold storage in this cargo bay. They draw too much power to be kept at ready.”

“How long to power up?”

“A few minutes. Perhaps.”

“Where’s the child being held?” Mando questioned, and the doctor zoomed again to another section of the ship.

“This is the brig. He’s being held here under armed guard.”

The group was silent for a moment, wheels turning in everyone’s heads as they studied the projection. The child’s cell was in the opposite direction of the bridge, where Gideon was most likely to be holed up with his personal guards.

“We’ll have to split up,” Alax said finally. “One group to the bridge to secure control of the cruiser, one to retrieve the child.”

“I go alone,” Mando insisted, but the commander shut him down.

“Not a chance,” she said, pointing to the projection. “The dark trooper bay is on the way to the brig. We may be able to disable them, but I don’t want to leave it up to you alone.”

“I’ll go with him,” Cara offered.

Alax shook her head again. “I need you with the boarding party. With the big gun. I’ll go with Mando.”

The Alderaanian hesitated for a moment, as Alax knew she would. Cara had a connection with the man and the child and clearly wanted to be right there with him in the fight. But eventually she nodded in agreement, knowing that the only person she trusted to take her place was the commander herself.

“Fine,” Bo-Katan said, ready to take over. “Phase one, lambda shuttle issues a distress call. Two, we come in hot, emergency land at the mouth of the fighter launch tube, cutting off any potential interceptors. Koska, Fennec, Dune, and myself disembark with maximum initiative. Once we’ve neutralized the launch bay, we make our way through these tandem decks in a penetration maneuver. Once we draw a crowd, you two slip through the shadows, get the kid.”

“Don’t forget this,” said Fennec, aggressively snatching the code cylinder from Pershing’s breast pocket and handing it off to Mando.

They all nodded to each other, satisfied with the groups and the plan. A short time later they were in hyperspace, all on board the shuttle save for Fett, who trailed behind in his own ship.

“Moff Gideon is mine,” said Bo-Katan from the pilot’s seat. “Got it?”

She shot a look behind her at Alax and Cara, who each met her cold gaze.

“He’s got a lot of information,” the commander said. “I need him alive.”

“I don’t care what happens to him, as long as he surrenders to me,” said the red-haired Mandalorian. “He has something I need, too.”

Alax and Cara shared a look. Again the commander got the feeling that this wasn’t what her partner would have preferred, but knew she was willing to do whatever it took to get this job done. Eventually the marshal nodded.

“Prepare to exit jump space.” Fett’s voice rang out over the comms, breaking up the slightly tense moment and reminding them all of what they needed to be focused on.

“Copy that,” answered Bo-Katan. “Get the hell out of there as soon as they clear us to dock. And your shots have to look convincing.”

“Power up those shields, Princess. I’ll put on a good show.”

“Watch out for the deck cannons,” Alax reminded him.

“Don’t worry about me,” replied Fett. “Just be careful in there.”

“Exiting hyperspace in three...two...” Koska counted down, “...one.”

The swirl of hyperspace gave way to elongated star lines and then real space, and then there was no turning back. Fett dropped from hyperspace a moment after and began firing his lasers at the lambda shuttle, which Bo-Katan flew in a weaving motion in order to appear to be avoiding his fire.

Alax stepped up to take control of the comms, putting as much panic and fear into her accented voice as possible as she issued the distress call.

“This is lambda shuttle two-seven-four-three, requesting emergency docking,” she pleaded. “Repeat, requesting emergency docking. We are under attack!”

They waited a moment, then a voice came over the intercom. “Request received....Stay clear of launch tube. Deploying fighter squadron.”

The cruiser deployed a pair of TIEs, but Bo-Katan continued piloting the shuttle toward the launch tube they came from, per the plan. As they’d expected, the Imp on the intercom didn’t like this development. She ordered the shuttle to clear, and Alax continued to make excuses back as the lambda neared the opening. The crew all held on and held their breaths as Bo-Katan somehow squeezed the ship into the launch tube and came to a rough landing in the hangar.

There was barely time to take a deep breath before the next phase had to begin, but Cara stole a moment to plant a kiss on Alax before disembarking with the other three women.

“Don’t mess this up,” she advised with a smirk.

“Yes, ma’am,” Alax replied, well after Cara had already gone.

She stood quietly with the Mandalorian, waiting, listening to the action outside the shuttle. It sounded like it was going well, and the commander wished she could have seen it. The four of them cutting through all those stormtroopers was sure to be a wonderful sight. But soon the noise moved farther away, then faded altogether.

“Ready?” she asked, and received a nod from Mando. “They’ve probably activated the dark troopers by now. We have to be quick.”

Cautiously they exited the shuttle, blasters drawn as they made their way down the ramp. Stormtrooper bodies littered the floor of the hangar but no one appeared to have stayed behind to deal with anyone else that might have been on the ship. _Typical Imperial negligence_ , Alax thought.

They picked up the pace as they moved from the hangar in the direction of the dark trooper bay and the brig, still careful to make sure each corridor was clear before entering. Alax cursed under her breath each time they had to stop and wait for a squad of troopers or the occasional protocol droid to pass by as they hid, wasting precious seconds. The internal clock counting down in her head was reaching an alarmingly small number when they heard a distant clanking sound. The troopers were on the move.

“This is it,” she said to the Mandalorian, pointing down the corridor at a control panel on the side of the bay doors. “Go, I’ll cover you.”

Mando sprinted toward the panel, blaster in one hand, code cylinder in the other. But the door was already opening. “No, _no!_ ”

He plugged the cylinder into the control panel and smashed a button, stopping the doors from opening further, but a pair of shining metal hands denied their closure. Mando opened fire at the trooper through the door. It had no effect.

The dark trooper pried open the bay doors, grabbed the Mandalorian by the helmet with one enormous hand, and threw him violently across the corridor into the bulkhead. Mando fell in a heap and didn’t move as the droid trooper took slow, clanking steps toward him. Alax was in shock at the sight but forced herself into action. She fired her blaster at its head, knowing full well it wouldn’t have an effect on the armor but also knowing that the thing would snap the Mandalorian in half if she didn’t draw its attention away. The move accomplished that at least, as the hulking black droid turned toward her and began marching menacingly that way.

“Ah yeah, real smart Vanda,” she said to herself, holstering her blaster and getting into fighting position. The trooper began unleashing terrifying punches toward her head, but the commander deftly dodged them. She danced around it, distantly aware of a persistent sound at the bay doors, most likely the other troopers trying to get through. Alax stayed on her toes, keeping the droid missing by just inches. Until it somehow realized it was taking the wrong approach.

It brought up its blaster, and at that moment she felt all hope leave her body.

_I’m sorry Cara_ , she thought, _I messed it up_.

Alax closed her eyes, picturing the Alderaanian’s smile one last time before the trooper could end her life.

But rather than the sound of its blaster firing, she heard a metallic crunching noise. She opened her eyes and saw a metal spike poking through the neck of the dark trooper. It lost power and fell to the floor, revealing the Mandalorian behind it holding the other end of his spear.

“I would have done that sooner,” he said lightly, “but it looked like you were doing okay there for a minute.”

Alax finally took a breath as the realization of what happened fell over her. She chuckled, appreciative of the man’s sense of humor, which she hadn’t expected.

“Well...I am part robot myself.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind,” she said as their attention returned to the pounding at the bay doors. “Let’s just make sure his friends don’t get out.”

Mando hustled back to the control panel, looking around at it for a way to shut off the troopers on the other side of the door. “Uhh...how about--”

He pulled a lever on the left side of the panel, and the doors on the opposite end of the bay opened wide, sucking every last dark trooper out into the void of space.

“Huh.” Alax looked at him and shrugged. “Easy enough. You good?”

“I’m good,” the Mandalorian replied. “You?”

“Never better,” she said. Without another word of the incident they took off toward the brig. Alax brought her wrist comm to her face and tapped a button. “Dark troopers have been jettisoned. What’s your status?”

“On our way up to the bridge,” Cara’s voice replied a few seconds later. “Having a good time, actually. Wish you were here.”

The commander smiled. Even in separate teams their typical battle banter worked, and she was elated just to have lived long enough to hear the marshal’s voice again.

“Just keep a seat warm for me up there, alright?”

“Copy that.”

The rest of the journey to the brig was uneventful, at least until they reached the cell holding the child and met two stormtroopers standing guard. Alax went to shoot one, but the Mandalorian rushed ahead and took them both out himself using an impressive combination of his spear and what she had to assume was his rage.

With the coast clear, Mando collected himself, took out the code cylinder again, and opened the cell door. Alax was right behind him, blaster still ready in case there were more guards inside. But the cell was empty except for a small, green creature with tiny shackles on its wrists, glowing blue. The child seemed to be in a daze, looking up almost drunkenly at the Mandalorian, who rushed to him and knelt down in front of the bench where he sat.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, and Alax could hear the slight shake in his voice clearly despite the filter from his helmet. “It’s okay, I’m gonna get you out of here.”

Mando took out his vibroblade and sawed through the connection point of the shackles. As they fell away, the child reached out for him and the Mandalorian scooped the kid up into his arms. Alax, feeling like she was intruding on a private moment, turned away and kept watch at the cell door. She gave them a minute, distantly listening to the man’s soft words and the child’s adorable cooing. The longer it went on, the more she felt a tightness in her chest, as if an emotion she’d long ago pushed away was trying to fight its way out of her. Not for the first time, she found herself wondering what it was like to have a father as caring and dedicated as the man cradling that little green creature in his arms.

Eventually she turned back, surprised to see the back of the Mandalorian’s head while he held the child in one arm and his helmet in the other hand.

“I think we should probably get moving,” Alax said quietly, hesitant to break up the moment but aware that there was a chance someone could be on the way to break it up in a more unfortunate fashion.

He slipped the helmet back on his head before turning around and following, the child held closely to his chest. They moved carefully through the cruiser, pleased to find no other stormtroopers seemed to be roaming about. But just when they reached the elevator that led to the bridge and Alax began to think they were home free, Cara’s voice came over her comm again.

“We got a problem.”

“Care to be more specific?” Alax asked as the lift started to move.

“The dark troopers,” Cara said. “They’re coming back onto the ship.”

The commander cursed under her breath yet again, then realized something. “Wait. Aren’t you on the bridge?”

“Yes....”

“Then find the control panel and deactivate them from there,” she advised.

“Oh,” Cara said. Several long, painfully quiet seconds passed before her voice returned. “Yeah okay, we’re good.”

Alax shook her head.

“Always gotta make things more complicated than necessary,” she mumbled, then spoke into the comm again. “Glad to hear it. We’ll be right there.”

They were right there in seconds in fact, joining the Alderaanian on the bridge along with the other three women and a pile of dead Imps. Cara and Alax embraced briefly before the marshal turned her attention to Mando and the kid, smiling widely. Meanwhile Alax took stock of the situation -- namely of Koska and Bo-Katan standing over what appeared to be an unconscious Moff Gideon, the redheaded Mandalorian holding the hilt of a shimmering sword.

“Got what we wanted?” asked the commander, and she nodded in return.

“Gideon’s all yours,” Bo-Katan said, then pressed a button on the hilt of her new weapon. The blade shrunk down and then disappeared, leaving Alax confused but not enough to question it. “Would like it if we could discuss the possibility of me keeping this ship in order to take back our homeworld, however.”

Koska nodded next to her, and Alax returned the gesture to both of them. “I think we can work something out.”

Eventually Cara returned to her side, letting the rest of the group have a moment of fawning over the little one they’d helped save. Alax watched as the Mandalorian continued to hold him closely, even now that he was safe and in the presence of people who only wanted him to stay that way. She put her arm around Cara, who leaned in and rested her head on her shoulder.

“Guess it went alright?” the Alderaanian asked.

“Mostly,” Alax admitted. “Got a little hairy there for a moment, but Mando saved my ass.”

“He’s pretty good at that.”

“Yeah,” the commander said, then paused for a moment before making another observation about the man. “I didn’t expect him to have such nice hair.”

All at once Cara lifted her head, moved out from Alax’s grasp, and turned to look at her with disbelieving eyes.

“ _What_ did you just say?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cough* Queen Bo-Katan rights *cough*


	9. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ignoring canon to give Mando and Grogu more father-son time? It's more likely than you think. And also...very helpful to my own plot.

It was a full day after the rescue mission before Cara really took stock of all that had happened. And thought about what would happen next.

Back on board the _Eclipse_ , leaning on a railing overlooking the hangar on the level below, she watched Mando playing with the kid between docked ships. She was happy he’d said yes to Alax’s offer to let them stick around for a while, at least until they could collect the bounties on Pershing and Gideon and get him a new ship. They’d expected to have to split the credits several ways, but between Bo-Katan taking the light cruiser and Boba and Fennec accepting official pardons from the commander instead, there’d be plenty. Both for Mando to buy a ship and for Cara and Alax to one day take a very long vacation, a concept the former Imp had to have explained to her for the first time when the Alderaanian brought it up.

The idea of taking some time off was a welcome one, but there was still work to do before they got to that point. Between the clone engineer and the moff, they had a wealth of useful information at their disposal -- assuming they could get them to talk. It was a safe bet that the doctor would, given how eager he’d been to give them what they needed to infiltrate the cruiser. But Gideon would be a different story.

“Hey!” Mando’s voice from below broke her concentration. “Check this out.”

Cara looked down at them, Mando standing a few meters away from where the kid sat atop a crate. He held something up in front of him, the little silver ball she’d seen him fiddling with before the mission.

“Grogu? Ready?” the Mandalorian asked the kid, and Cara almost had to laugh hearing him say the silly name with such joy. “Show Cara what you can do.”

He held up the ball between his thumb and index finger, and the child raised its own three-fingered hand, seemingly in deep concentration. Grogu made the slightest motion with his hand, and in an instant the ball flew out of Mando’s grasp and into his. The helmeted man laughed in satisfaction and pumped a fist.

“Very good!” he told the kid, going over to give him a proud pat on the back. He looked up at Cara, who gave a tight smile and a thumbs-up.

“Nice work,” she said, trying not to sound unimpressed. It wasn’t easy. After all, she’d already seen the kid heal a mortal wound _and_ throw a ball of fire at an incinerator trooper. Not to mention the whole choking her incident. But she had to admit that it was cute how proud Mando seemed to be of the kid’s mastery of the relatively simple move.

And he wasn’t the only one who appreciated it.

“That’s a neat trick,” Alax said from behind her. Cara shrugged as the commander joined her at the railing.

“I’ve seen better.”

She smirked as Alax looked at her with a raised eyebrow. They stood there for a while and watched the game continue before the redhead spoke up.

“He’s a Jedi, isn’t he?”

Cara looked at her in surprise.

“You know about the Jedi?” She had heard stories of the mysterious sorcerers as a child, never thinking much of it or even believing they were real until decades later when the Mandalorian armorer gave her friend the task of bringing the kid back to them. But clearly Alax knew something she didn’t.

“Sure. They kept the Republic safe and at peace -- relatively speaking -- for thousands of years. At the end of the Clone Wars, the Emperor told everyone that they were traitors, but that was a lie. He had them murdered because they were the only real threat to his power.” The commander paused, shaking her head slightly. “I didn’t think there were any left. Until I heard about Luke Skywalker, that is.”

“Luke Skywalker is a Jedi?” Cara asked. Alax nodded, and the marshal thought about it for a moment. “That explains a lot, actually.”

“Like how he managed to blow up the Death Star,” Alax suggested.

“Exactly.”

“Speaking of which...” the commander said, turning to lean on the railing with one arm and look seriously at her partner. “You wanna talk about what happened back on the shuttle?”

“Not much to talk about,” Cara replied, placing a reassuring hand over Alax’s on the railing when she looked skeptically at her. “Just wish I’d had the chance to beat his face in instead of shoot it off.”

“Well alright,” Alax said with a laugh, then grew quiet and looked down at her feet with a somber face.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just....there’s some days when I don’t know how you can look at my face and not see ones like that staring back at you...”

The sides of Cara’s mouth pulled back in a sad, sympathetic smile. She believed what Alax had said to her in the cargo hold on _Slave I_ , that she was trying to forgive herself for her past. But it wasn’t coming easily, despite the Alderaanian’s insistence that she had nothing to feel guilty for. Insisting, she guessed, wouldn’t ultimately be the approach that would get through to her.

“Because I like your face, that’s how.”

Cara took a step toward her, reached up and placed a hand on the side of Alax’s face, then leaned in to kiss the other side gently. The commander let out a long sigh, nodding and then smiling as Cara kept her hand where it was and rested her forehead on hers.

They stayed there, speaking only through subtle, meaningful touches as the rest of the activity on the ship melted away around them. Until excited babbling and laughter from the level below broke through their private bubble.

They broke apart and saw that Mando and the kid had attracted a small crowd of pilots and other crew members, all gathered around to fawn over the strange but adorable baby with the magic powers. The man was practically radiating pride through his shiny beskar armor as he held the kid in his lap for all to see.

“Is that what it’s like?” Alax asked quietly, her voice thick with emotion.

“What?”

“Having a....a father that loves you?”

“More or less,” Cara said, heart breaking at the look of sadness and envy in the green eyes that continued to watch the scene below. “From what I can remember.” 

The marshal took her hand to get her attention, then nodded behind them toward the empty crew lounge. As she guided Alax to the seating area she couldn’t help but think of her own father who’d loved her. He was long gone, lost along with everyone else she’d loved on Alderaan, but the memories of him -- of the rest of her family -- were still clear. It had been those very memories that kept her going all these years, kept her from becoming totally consumed by her anger and her hatred for the Empire. Without them, she likely would have lost her humanity altogether.

But Alax had no such memories. It was a wonder, Cara thought, that she’d turned out to be such a good human herself in the end. No one had ever given her affection like Cara’s father had or shown that they were proud of her like Mando did with Grogu. No one had ever fought to protect her or told her they loved her. Until now.

“Hey,” Cara said, forcing Alax to look at her after she’d covered her face in her hands the moment they sat down. “I know you’ve spent a long time thinking that not having that in your life means you’re incomplete somehow...but I promise you Alax, you don’t need it. Sometimes it’s the people you find along the way that make the better family. It’s the people we choose to love...not the ones we have an obligation to.”

The commander appeared to hold her breath then, as if she’d understood the insinuation behind Cara’s words but was afraid to confirm it. So Cara made it as clear as she possibly could.

“I love you, Alax. I’ll be your family.”

She leaned in to kiss her but Alax pulled back, the way she had when Cara had first tried to do the same thing.

“Cara, I don’t deser--”

“If you say that D-word one more time when I’m trying to confess something to you, I’m gonna lose it,” the marshal warned lightheartedly, though she suspected it might actually be true.

“But the things I’ve done--”

“It wasn’t you that did those things. That was some Imp. You’re not her, you’re not Arani Hux. You are Alax Vanda, and I love you.” Cara was trying desperately to convince her, to make her see what she saw in her. Alax hadn’t earned her love because she’d changed her name or because she was cute and kind and smart and unexpectedly funny, though those things were all true. She’d won Cara’s heart because she’d decided that fighting for others was more important than remaining loyal to those who’d made her what she was before. “You could have gone right back to your old life after we met, even after what happened and what you’d seen. You could have kept being what they made you, but you didn’t. You made a choice. You _chose_ to be better....And I love you for that.”

Alax’s green eyes were watery as they finally looked up to meet Cara’s. The Alderaanian smiled warmly and caressed her face, which eventually broke into a smile as well. Cara took the opportunity to go in for a kiss again and this time was not denied.

After a moment the commander broke away to look at her warmly. “Cara, I....I...”

“You don’t have to say it ba--”

“I love you too,” Alax finally managed to say. “I mean, I...I’ve never really known what that meant but....pretty sure.”

She smiled nervously. Cara pulled her closer.

“That’s good enough for me,” she said, and again connected them in a kiss. One led to another and another and all the while they smiled into each other. The moment was soon interrupted though, as a crew member walked into the lounge, exclaimed in surprise at the scene, and quickly retreated. They laughed together and Alax buried her face in Cara’s shoulder in embarrassment. After a minute of sitting there that way, the marshal broke the silence. “So, do you...love me enough to change your mind about letting me sit in on the Gideon interrogation?”

Alax sat up straight and squinted at her.

“That’s manipulation,” she said, finger pointing in mock accusation. Cara shrugged guiltily and the commander shook her head. “Not gonna happen. Sorry.”

“Worth a shot.”

Despite Cara’s best efforts, she found herself on the outside looking in as Alax entered the interview room where Gideon sat a while later that day. Questioning him wasn’t something they needed to do, technically, before handing him over to the New Republic. He’d done enough horrific things during the war to warrant execution or, if the new government was feeling merciful, even a Wookiee’s life span worth of time in prison. But it was the more recent crimes that concerned Alax and Cara, and the commander would be damned if she let him off her ship without at least attempting to get some answers from him.

Watching on video monitors from the next room, Cara saw her partner enter the interview room where they’d been reunited after seven years. The grin that had graced Alax’s face on that occasion was nowhere to be found now. Instead she stood in the doorway with glaring eyes, studying the man sitting shackled on the other side of the table. Gideon’s face may as well have been made of stone as he stared back at her, watched her take a seat across from him and cross her right leg over her left knee casually.

Cara was somewhat surprised by the conversational tone of her voice when she finally began to speak to him.

“You know...I’ve been debating with myself about how best to go at you in here. What’s the right line of questioning, what’s the best strategy against a man like you? How do I play the game just right to trick you into talking?” Alax sat up from her semi-reclined position and leaned forward to fold her hands on the table. “But then I realized. You already know how to play the game better than I do. I’m never going to be able to trick you into saying something you don’t want to say. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to ask you the questions I have, and if you want the rest of your life to amount to more than just the time it takes to try you and execute you for war crimes, you’ll answer. Deal?”

Gideon didn’t answer that question, or the half dozen others Alax asked him first about whether he had more ships or where other Imperial remnants were located. Cara hadn’t expected him to answer and she knew Alax didn’t either, but it was still frustrating to watch him sit there, completely unbothered by the situation he was in.

“What are you trying to accomplish?” the commander continued curiously. “What was the plan for the child?”

Still Gideon sat there with perhaps the best sabacc face Cara had ever seen. Alax waved her hand as if erasing the previous question.

“You don’t have to answer that one, we have the doctor for that.” For the first time, the moff’s expression flashed with an emotion besides indifference. Surprise. He hadn’t known they had Pershing too. Cara saw Alax recognize the change as well, taking an extra moment to appreciate it before moving on. “Who do you answer to?”

It was Cara who was surprised by that question. As far as she’d known, Gideon was the one calling the shots in his operation. Apparently Alax knew better. She made a mental note to ask about it eventually.

The moff’s eyes narrowed, squinting at the commander as if he were trying to recall the answer. But he gave no other indication that he might talk, so Alax sighed dramatically and stood up.

“Alright. Enjoy carbon freeze. It’ll be good practice for when you’re dead.”

“Brendol Hux.”

Gideon’s voice froze the commander in her tracks just as she reached for the door control. Cara held her breath as she watched her slowly turn around to stare at him.

“Brendol Hux?”

“Yes…” Gideon said slowly, an unsettling grin creeping across his face. “I’m sorry--that’s not the answer to your question. But it is the answer to mine.”

“ _Your_ question?”

“Of why you look so familiar. Oh yes...you’re the spitting image of him, aren’t you?” Cara’s hands drew up into fists as the moff continued to smile venomously at the person she loved. It took all her self-control to stay where she was and not march right in there and knock that smile off his face. “His daughter, right? Arani? Word was you’d died.”

“Well, we have that in common, don’t we?” Alax said, her voice quiet but harsh.

“Indeed we do. Only... _I_ remained loyal to the Empire through it all. You, however, seem to have chosen treason,” Gideon observed with a tsk tsk, and Cara watched as Alax’s jaw clenched in disgust. “What would the Commandant say if he could see you now? Such a shame...I’d heard you were becoming quite the useful asset.”

_Do not engage..._ the marshal thought, mentally willing her partner to get out of there and not give him the satisfaction of getting further under her skin.

“Where is ol’ Brendol these days?” asked Gideon, and Alax scoffed.

“I wouldn’t know.”

The moff smiled again. A knowing smile. _Oh, shit_.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Gideon said. “Stands to reason that if either of you knew where the other was...you wouldn’t both still be alive.”

Alax scowled at the man for a moment longer, then tore her gaze away and went for the door.

“He knows,” Cara said the moment Alax entered the adjoining room. Gideon’s smile had told her everything. He knew more than they did and he delighted in it. The commander didn’t respond, just stared at the monitors, eyes distant. “Alax, he knows where he is. I saw it from here, I know you saw it.”

“So?” Alax asked, turning to look at her impatiently.

“So make him tell you.”

“And how am I supposed to do that? It’s not like I’ve got an IT-O droid around here.”

The marshal shrugged. “I dunno...beat it out of him.”

“Cara.”

“What? He deserves it.”

“That’s not the point,” Alax said, shaking her head. “Let it go, okay? We’re bringing him in, that’s it. If he feels like talking once he’s locked up, I’m sure we’ll find out.”

“But it might be too late by then,” Cara argued. She couldn’t understand why Alax didn’t seem interested in the information Gideon had, why she was in no rush to finally learn the one thing she’d spent years living to find out.

“We’re not discussing this. We’ve got a job to do and that has nothing to do with it,” the commander said with finality. She left the room and spoke to the officers standing guard. “Put him in carbonite. I’m not taking any chances.”

“Alax....” Cara tried, but she was already marching off down the corridor, apparently uninterested in continuing the conversation.

From the other end of the hall came Mando, carrying the kid and nodding politely at Alax they passed each other. He received no recognition in return and looked back at her questioningly as he approached Cara.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Cara lied. In reality she was worried about her partner, about how rattled she’d gotten by Gideon’s taunts. But she had to act quickly if she wanted to make things right. The officers emerged from the room with the moff, whose eyes widened at the sight of Cara and Mando. “Actually guys, leave him to us, okay?”

The crew members exchanged an unsure look.

“But...the commander sai--”

“And I said...leave him to us.” Cara’s hand drifted toward the blaster at her side as she glared at them, and Mando matched the move despite having no idea what was going on. The subtle intimidation worked as she’d known it would, and the officers returned Gideon to the interview room and fled the scene. Cara stared daggers at him as she spoke to the Mandalorian. “Remember yesterday when you said you owe me one?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m calling in that favor.”

~

It took a real effort for Alax to tell herself she was making the right choice.

Since the moment she ordered her crew to put Gideon in carbon freeze, she hadn’t stopped questioning whether Cara was right, whether she should have done whatever it took to find out what he knew about her father. After all, finding him had been at the top of a very short list of things she wanted to do for the past several years. But a lot had changed recently. Getting rid of him, getting revenge, was no longer her highest priority. It was still high on the list, but the importance of it paled in comparison to the importance of keeping everything she’d gained over the recent months. And going rogue to go after him could end up putting all of that in jeopardy.

Her internal debate over it all while staring out a viewport at the void of space was interrupted suddenly, as that void gave way to elongated star lines and she felt the ship jerk into hyperspace. _What the hell?_

“Payne?” Alax said impatiently into her wrist comm. “Where the hell are we going and on whose authority are we going there?”

She took off toward the cockpit without waiting for the captain’s response. It didn’t come, even after multiple attempts at getting his attention. That wasn’t a good sign. Payne always answered. Had someone gotten to him and hijacked the ship? Was Gideon behind this somehow?

Alax rushed to the cockpit and entered with her blaster drawn. But when the door opened, it wasn’t her pilots _or_ Imperial hijackers on the other side. Just Cara and Mando, sitting nonchalantly in the pilot and co-pilot’s seats.

“What the kriffing hell are you two doing?” the commander questioned. “Where is Payne? And where are we going?”

“To pay a visit to dear old dad,” Cara said, spinning around in the co-pilot’s chair to face her. Alax glared back in response.

“And just how did you happen to come across his location?”

The marshal shared a look with the Mandalorian, then shrugged. “Turns out Gideon can be helpful if you just....motivate him properly.”

Alax sighed deeply, massaging the space between her eyes with the hand still holding her blaster. “Is he at least in carbonite now?”

“Of course. We’re not idiots,” Cara said with a grin. It vanished when the commander glared again at her. “Alax, I just--”

“I thought I said no,” the redhead cut her off. “I thought I said we had a job to do....”

Her voice broke with the last words, as if her confidence in them had faded before they made it all the way out. She knew she wasn’t winning this argument with herself. Cara stood up and came to her, taking her hand and speaking gently.

“You did. And you might not need to do this for yourself anymore, but think about everybody that could get hurt if we just let him go on breathing. What about them?” the Alderaanian asked, and Alax stared down at her feet, already knowing she was right. “What about your brother? What will Brendol turn him into if we don’t do this?”

Alax hadn’t even thought about that. If she let her father go, if she gave him the opportunity to program Armitage like he’d done to her....would she be able to live with herself? If that boy went on to finish their father’s work, all the good she had done since breaking free from him would be for nothing. This was her one opportunity to eliminate Brendol and his poisonous ways, and, just maybe, salvage the connection with the only blood family member she had left except for him.

She finally looked back up at Cara, whose eyes were full of support and, the commander judged, a dangerous determination. Her father didn’t stand a chance against her new family.

“I’m in, Mando’s in...” the marshal listed. “That just leaves one more person. You in, Vanda?”

Cara smirked, and Alax couldn’t help but do the same.

“Yeah. I’m in,” she said, matching her partner’s smile momentarily before putting on a straight face. “Now what the hell did you do with my pilots?”


	10. The Commandant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws ALL the General Hux canon in the garbage* deal with it (in this universe we reject the whole idea of the First Order)

“Are you _sure_ this is the place?”

Looking down from the _Eclipse_ at the Nakadian capital city of Quarrow, Alax was skeptical to say the least. Brendol Hux, infamous Imperial commandant, settling down on the New Republic capital? Nothing seemed less plausible.

Cara merely shrugged. “It’s what Gideon said.”

“Have we considered that he might not have been a reliable source of information?” asked the Mandalorian, earning a slightly offended glare from the marshal. “I mean, the man is notoriously....evil, after all.”

“Look, I know how to get people to talk, and I know when they’re lying,” Cara argued. “He wasn’t. This is the place.”

Despite the fact that she trusted Cara’s judgement, Alax found she still agreed with Mando. Even if Gideon knew where her father was, he’d had no reason to tell them the truth about it -- Cara’s enhanced interrogation notwithstanding. And this seemed further proof that he’d been untruthful. Unless of course, Gideon had some reason for wanting her father dead, in which case he wouldn't mind giving him up, which was entirely possible. Still, at first the commander had thought perhaps Brendol was simply out in space on some ship near Nakadia, not on the actual planet. But their scans of the system showed no ships that seemed out of place, no matter how many times she had run them from the command bridge.

Alax couldn’t help but wonder what the endgame was, what her father could possibly hope to achieve by setting up shop on any New Republic-held world, much less the capital. Was he out of the game? Finished with the Empire? That didn’t seem likely. He’d built his entire life and career around service to it, much to the detriment of his only daughter’s upbringing. But if he was just hiding out, biding his time, surely there were better options.

“Just seems rather brazen, even for--” Alax began, but then a realization fell over her. She chuckled dryly. “Of course...”

“What?” asked Cara.

“‘When your back’s against the wall, do what your enemy least expects,’” Alax recited from a long-ago lesson. “That was the only time Brendol ever preached something other than adhering to a routine. The routine in this case, at least for the rest of the Empire, was to flee to the Outer Rim or the Unknown Regions. But he knew that’s where we’d be looking for them. He knew we’d never look right under our own noses.”

“Well, he was wrong. Here we are,” said the Alderaanian. “Now...how do we find him?”

Alax stared down at the city below, bustling with activity and hope for a brighter future. Its citizens had no idea there was a monster living amongst them. Whatever Brendol’s goal was, it wouldn’t be good news for these people. Whatever it took, she had to find him. And there was only one way to do it.

“We follow his programming.”

~

Within a couple weeks of landing on Nakadia, they had only made marginal progress on the task of locating Brendol Hux. After turning Pershing and Gideon over to the New Republic for processing, Alax had put in for leave for herself and the rest of the _Eclipse_ crew. It was granted, and the majority of her crew dispersed back to the worlds they called home or whatever planet they’d been waiting to vacation on, but the commander remained in Quarrow with Cara and the Mandalorian and the kid.

Working from the docked frigate, they had been able to scan the area surrounding the city, where she thought her father was most likely to have been hiding. It was mostly farmland, inhabited by families who worked tirelessly to provide resources to others not only on Nakadia, but across the New Republic. Alax’s scans showed that most of these farms seemed to be operating exactly how they were supposed to. But one, just on the outskirts of the city, had caught her attention. The farmland wasn’t being worked at all -- no machinery, no droids, no workers -- but it wasn’t abandoned. The buildings were using up quite a bit of power, and readings showed multiple life forms.

Alax couldn’t explain how she knew, but she was sure this was where Brendol was hiding. The place checked every box for what she thought he would need. It was secluded, but close enough to the city that he could easily find supplies and perhaps even recruit young, disaffected humans to serve as the next generation of Imperial troops. The buildings and land would be sufficient for training these potential soldiers as well. And to top it all off, an extremely out of place signal tower stretched to the sky in the middle of it, likely capable of sending encrypted messages clear out to the Outer Rim. This had to be it.

Since they’d discovered the place, the three of them had been taking turns monitoring it, desperate for any confirmation that Brendol was present. The _Eclipse_ had been docked as close to the defunct farm as possible without raising suspicion, allowing them to keep both an eye on the place and an ear on the transmissions, once they’d been able to tap into the signal from the tower. So far their efforts had been fruitless. The Commandant must have had others working for him, allowing him to remain unexposed.

Alax wasn’t surprised by that but she was growing frustrated, as evidenced by the near-constant scrunching of the muscles in her forehead as she focused and contemplated all day about how to draw him out. Cara was equally frustrated but determined not to show it in front of anyone, especially the commander. On the contrary, she was doing her best to force her partner to relax every once in a while.

Which was why she found herself interrupting Alax’s concentration as she studied readouts alone in the crew lounge.

“Hey,” the marshal said, removing the datapad from Alax’s hands unceremoniously and taking a seat on her lap. “It’s time for a break.”

“But I--” the commander began to protest, but Cara shut her up quickly with a searing kiss. Alax had to take a moment to catch her breath when it ended. “Alright. Point well made.”

The Alderaanian grinned with satisfaction, clasping her hands together behind Alax’s neck as she looked her up and down.

“You know...I really like this casual look on you, Commander Vanda,” she said of the messy red hair and plain clothes her partner had been wearing since they’d officially been on leave. “Way more than the uniform.”

“Oh yeah?” Alax asked, and Cara hummed in confirmation. “I thought the uniform was good?”

“It’s good. But this is better.”

“Well...maybe after all this it’ll be time to trade it in for good.”

It took a second for the implication of the statement to really hit Cara, as she was honestly more focused on what was beneath Alax’s clothes than anything. But when it finally set in, her head shot up to look her in the eye.

“You’re serious?” she asked. Alax just nodded, a hint of a smile peeking from the corner of her mouth. “What would you do?”

The commander shrugged. “I’ve heard Nevarro’s a nice place. Maybe I’ll...get a room there, try to find some honest work....”

“Oh, well you’re in luck,” said Cara, matching the playful grin Alax was wearing. “Just so happens, I know a guy.”

“That’s good to know.”

They chatted about the possibilities, about returning to Nevarro, working together to protect the town, not being beholden to the whims and the rules of the important people in the New Republic. It all sounded great. But Cara wasn’t yet convinced Alax could really leave her life on the _Eclipse_ behind.

“What about the rest of the Imps?” she asked. “What happened to finishing that job?”

“I have a feeling now that we’ve turned Gideon in, the New Republic will be much more enthusiastic about helping out with that,” the commander said. “Which is good...because I don’t see it as my own responsibility anymore.”

An unexpected feeling of pride washed over Cara. It had taken a while, and countless reminders and reassurances, but Alax had finally done it. She’d forgiven herself, at least enough to let go of the self-placed burden of tracking down all the remnants of the Empire that had turned her into a weapon so long ago.

“No?” Cara asked with a smile, and Alax shook her head.

“I’ve done what I could. What I needed to do,” she said. “It’s time to move on.”

Cara’s smile continued to grow before she leaned down to kiss her again. “I’m trying not to be all dopey and say how proud I am of you, but it’s really hard.”

Alax laughed, all thoughts of Brendol and the Imps gone from her mind. “Just promise me one thing, okay?”

“Name it.”

“Join me for a little freelancing whenever we get the chance?” the commander suggested with a playful waggle of her eyebrows. Cara nodded in satisfied agreement.

“You know you don’t even have to ask, Vanda.”

~

Alax was in the middle of a game of sabacc when the moment came.

In the downtime of waiting for Brendol to make his presence known, Cara and Mando had been teaching her how to play. And she was taking to it quickly. Sure it was mostly about the luck of the draw, but she liked the subtle strategy of it, the mind games.

In this particular game she was seated across from the Mandalorian, quietly studying every miniscule movement he made that might provide a hint as to the cards he held. Meanwhile the child in his lap played happily with his game chips, even stuffing one in its mouth to chew on. But Alax wasn’t distracted. She peeked once more at her own cards. Straight staves. A very strong hand, but the size of the Mandalorian’s bet suggested he could have one of the few that were stronger, a full sabacc or even an idiot’s array.

She studied Mando for a moment longer. The helmet obscured his facial expressions, but he did have a tell. His right hand was covering his face-down cards on the table, and his pinky finger twitched anxiously, just for a second. Just long enough for her to spot it.

“Call,” Alax announced confidently, pushing the remainder of her chips into the pot. If they’d been playing for actual credits, it would have been quite a large bet. She flipped her cards, revealing the straight.

Mando grabbed his own cards, tapped them on the table twice, then--

“We got him!”

Cara’s voice broke the tension of the moment as she burst into the room. Alax’s attention snapped to her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we got him. He showed his face,” the marshal explained. “Left for the city in a speeder.”

“Show me.”

Alax and Mando stood and Cara turned to lead them back to the command bridge. The Mandalorian was right on her tail, but the commander stopped at the doorway, turned around, and flipped his sabacc cards curiously. She chuckled. He had nothing.

“Knew it.”

On the bridge, Cara pulled up the image that had sent her to break up their game. Sure enough, the grainy holo showed the man Alax had waited years to see again. He looked older and grayer now, but it was still the same face she hated seeing when she looked in the mirror.

“How long ago?” she asked, voice cold as she stared at the image.

“Ten minutes.”

“Alone?”

“Just a couple of guards,” Cara said, to Alax’s relief. Armitage was elsewhere. He wouldn’t be in danger. “We have to move quickly, there’s no telling where he’s going or how soon he’ll come back.”

“What’s the play?” Mando inquired. “Try to find him in the city? If you want, I can take him out quietly.”

“Or bring him back here so I can do it a little louder,” Cara suggested.

They were both tempting options, Alax had to admit. And she appreciated how eager the two of them were on her behalf. But right now there was something more important.

“No,” she said. “We have to get to the farm, secure whatever recruits he’s gathered and get them to safety. We’ll deal with Brendol if and when he comes back.”

Cara nodded. “Then let’s move. We’ll figure it out on the way.”

The trio geared up and set out for the nearby farm, leaving Mando’s kid with Lieutenant Maden, one of the few crew members that had remained on the _Eclipse_ while on leave. As they made their way toward Brendol’s hideout, Alax was the only one not saying a word. Cara and Mando made a plan, strategized about how best to infiltrate the place, but the plan didn’t matter to her. She was focused. One way or another, today was the day her father’s work would come to an end.

When they reached the farm, she finally spoke up.

“If he does have kids in there, he’ll have already started to program them,” Alax warned. “They’ll be loyal to him, and to the Empire. They won’t want to come with us willingly, but that doesn’t mean they need to get hurt.”

“We got it,” Cara said, placing a comforting hand on her arm. “Set to stun. Don’t let ‘em shoot you.”

She and the Mandalorian both nodded, then they split up, each taking a different building of the farm. Alax went for the front door of the large main house, unsurprised to find it locked but delighted that a quick blast to the controls made that irrelevant. She entered, blaster at the ready, but there was no one to be seen. Moving slowly and carefully, she cleared room after room until she reached a kitchen. And, finally, another person. The woman cried out in surprise at the sight of her, dropping the handful of dishes she’d been holding.

“Stay calm,” Alax told her. “I’m not here to hurt you. Where did Brendol go? When will he be back?”

“I-I don’t know,” the woman stammered. “He’s never gone long....Who are you?”

“That’s not important. Is anyone else here? Kids?”

“You mean the cadets?”

“Yes,” Alax said, heart sinking at the knowledge that she’d been right. “How many? Where are they?”

“About a dozen,” the woman said. “Mostly in the barn, except...”

“Except what? Who?” the commander questioned. Then she realized. “Except for Armitage?”

The woman gaped at her. “How did you know that?”

“Tell me where he is. Now,” she demanded. The woman pointed toward a door on the side of the room. Alax looked that way, then nodded to her. “Thank you. If you have a room, get there now. My team and I will get you out of here safely once we have all the cadets secure.”

Alax took off through the door without waiting for the woman to respond. In the hallway, she radioed to Cara and Mando with the information she’d gotten. The Alderaanian was already in the process of securing the kids in the barn, and the Mandalorian reported that he was on his way to help with that.

The commander swiftly moved through the hallway, checking behind each door and finding nothing. Until she reached the end of the corridor. Behind the last door was a small room, plain and cramped, with a bed and a desk. And a boy.

The red-headed kid looked up at her from his bed with frightened green eyes, and Alax had to quickly shake off the feeling that she was looking at a 10-year-old version of herself.

“Armitage,” she said carefully. “You need to come with me.”

“How do you know my name?” the boy asked, in the same accent with which she spoke.

Alax sighed. “Because...you’re my brother.”

“What?” Armitage said, shaking his head vehemently. “N-no I’m not. I don’t know you.”

“No, I know you don’t remember me. But it’s okay. I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t need help,” he insisted. “I’m...the best cadet here.”

The words hit Alax like a round from a slugthrower. This boy didn’t just look and sound like her. He _was_ the same kid she’d been under Brendol’s influence. Scared under the surface but defiant, and above all, true to the programming. He’d never come with her if it meant going against his conditioning. Unless she was somehow able to break through it.

“I’m sure you are the best,” she said gently. “Even though they’re all older than you...bigger than you. Even though the Commandant doesn’t hurt them like he does to you...”

Alax watched as his face expressed surprise at how accurately she’d guessed about his life. A part of her had wished she was wrong, and she felt a heaviness in her heart as she watched him process it. He didn’t have protocols for this, and she knew it. Without thinking too hard about the action, she slowly turned her back to him and lifted her shirt to expose the skin underneath.

“See those scars? He used to do the same things to me that he does to you. But not anymore.” She put her shirt down and turned back around to find his eyes were wide with curiosity. She knew he wanted to know more. He wanted to believe her. Alax knelt down next to his bed and looked up at him, pleading. “You don’t have to let him hurt you anymore either. Come with me and you never have to worry about him again.”

Armitage stared at her for a long moment, and she could practically hear his brain processing what she’d said, trying to make sense of what he’d seen. Trying, she hoped, to rationalize going with her despite what his programming told him.

“No. You have their symbol. You’re with them,” he said, suddenly breaking out of the awed haze with another shake of his head. “I’m....I’m loyal. You can’t trick me.”

“It’s not a trick, Armitage--”

“You can’t!” he cried defiantly. “I’m loyal!”

“Yes you are, son,” said a voice from the doorway. Alax spun around, drawing her blaster and aiming it right between the eyes of her father. A chill fell over her as those green eyes flashed with recognition, then surprise. It lasted only a second before he was under control again. “Ah. Well done, Armitage. You’ve already proven yourself a much more reliable asset than your sister here.”

It took a great effort to steady the shake of her hands as she pointed the blaster at him. Years of anger and resentment and hatred were boiling over, and she could barely contain her emotions as she scowled at the man standing there with his hands clasped nonchalantly behind his back.

“You’re done hurting him, Brendol,” Alax warned through her teeth. “You’re done with all of it. This is the end of the line.”

“Is that right?” Brendol asked in an almost bored tone, as if this was just another afternoon. “So you haven’t just come to take my students, then? You’ve come to kill me, Arani?”

“Don't call me that,” she snarled.

“But you have, haven’t you?”

“That’s right,” said Alax. “Your programming failed, _Commandant_.”

“Ohhh no, on the contrary, my dear,” her father said, an unnatural smile spreading over his face. “It seems it’s still working to perfection.”

The commander’s glare and grip on her weapon faltered slightly. “What are you talking about? You didn’t program me to kill you.”

“Well no, of course I admit you’ve had your wires crossed somewhere along the line. Joining those filthy rebels, abandoning your own people. You require a recalibration,” Brendol said as if talking about a faulty droid that had been giving him trouble. “But after all this time, you’re still fulfilling your base function: destroy your enemy.”

Alax froze. _No_ , she thought. _That’s not what this is. That’s not why_. But...wasn’t it? For years, that had been her mission. Find her father, kill him, live the rest of her life in relative peace knowing she’d given him what he deserved. Killing him would eliminate a dangerous opponent and bring order. And order was what the programming had been all about.

But that wasn’t why she’d come, she reminded herself. It wasn’t about order. It wasn’t even about getting revenge for what he’d done to her anymore. It was about protecting the galaxy from him, protecting her new family from all the evil he could help bring down upon it.

And she didn’t have to kill him to prevent that.

“Well, go on then. Fulfill your mission,” Brendol encouraged. “You won’t feel complete until you do.”

Just then they heard a commotion out in the hall. Grunts and blows landing on flesh and armor -- the familiar sounds of a fight. Her father’s guards against...of course, Cara. Neither of them broke the staring match they’d been engaged in, however. Not until Alax saw the Alderaanian appear in the doorway behind the Commandant.

Their eyes met, and it was all she needed. An instant reminder of how far she’d come, of how his programming had been replaced by something better.

“Wrong again, Father,” Alax said calmly. “I already am complete.”

She focused on him again, then squeezed the trigger on her blaster. A ring of white light shot forth and struck him in the face, stunning him into unconsciousness.

~

“Still think you should have let me _actually_ shoot him first.”

Alax couldn’t help but chuckle as she and Cara watched the prisoner shuttle ascend into the clouds above Quarrow.

“I already had to make up enough stories about how Gideon got into the condition he was in when we handed him over,” the commander said. “Not really trying to make a habit out of that.”

The Alderaanian grumbled incoherently but made no further protests as they stood together on the landing platform at the capital spaceport. They didn’t technically need to be there anymore -- after calling in the New Republic to retrieve the newly arrested Commandant Hux, their only duty was to make sure he didn’t get away before an escort came to take him. But even now that said escort was out of sight, the two of them lingered.

Brendol might have been gone, but the other part of the mission was still there on the other side of the platform. The cadets they’d freed -- the ones that weren’t going back to their families on this planet, anyway -- were being boarded onto another shuttle. None of them looked particularly happy about it, least of all the small red-headed boy in the middle.

If his reaction to watching Alax shoot their father with a stun blast was any indication, it would be a rough time for Armitage for the next several months. He’d cried out, tried to take her blaster from her, called her several awful names. But Alax had just grabbed him and held him, hugged him, until he’d grown tired of fighting. She tried to explain again who she was and what was happening, but he hadn’t wanted to listen.

She didn’t blame him. She wouldn’t have listened either at that age.

“What’s going to happen to him?” Cara asked, her eyes following Armitage just as Alax’s were.

“Same thing that will happen to all of them,” she said. “There’s a place, a program the New Republic started at the end of the war, where they work on reversing the brainwashing that young Imperial recruits were subjected to. Takes longer for some than others, but so far it’s worked out.”

“Didn’t know there was such a place,” Cara mused. “It’s a good idea. Wonder who came up with that.”

Alax gave a sly smile. “Someone who could have used it.”

In truth, she hadn’t done much more than make a suggestion to the New Republic leadership, but it had been an important first step toward helping people like her, like her brother. Most Imperials had made a choice to join up, to either participate willingly in or turn a blind eye to the Empire’s evils. But it wasn’t fair to the ones that hadn’t had a choice to just throw them out into a bitter galaxy at the end of the war. Alax had been in the unique position to articulate that.

Cara smiled proudly at her and wrapped a strong arm around her waist.

“He’ll be lucky to have you, you know. When that’s done,” she said. “Not everybody gets such a cool big sister.”

Alax scratched her head awkwardly. “Yeah, I don’t...really know how to be that.”

“You’re a fast learner, Vanda. You’ll get it,” Cara promised, and Alax believed her. They stood there quietly then and watched as the shuttle with the cadets took off from the platform and flew away into space. Once it was out of sight they turned away and began the walk back to the _Eclipse_. “So...what do we do in the meantime?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said the commander. “I think it’s about time for a vacation.”

Cara let out a delighted -- if slightly sarcastic -- gasp. “You mean it?”

“Oh yeah,” Alax said with an easy grin. “It’s what we deserve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tbh, I'm glad to be done with this one. It started out so much better than it ended. That's on me. Obviously.


End file.
